Tiring day

Yesterday my housemate Tim helped destroy the big fella. We knocked off the remnants of clay, then cut him off at the ankles & then cut the big support off & he toppled over. Then i got the angle grinder with a nice big sharp cutting blade to slice off all the chicken wire. I found out that you can never be too careful when doing this task as i got a nasty on my arm from being whipped by a bit of chickenwire going at 10,000 rpm when it got tangled in the grinder. Keep it tight, peoples! Lucky there is a nice tee tree antiseptic spray in the first aid kit in the studio.

After that we just slogged away, cutting him up. Cutting the foam with breadknives, the steel & wire with the grinder. Sweeping up the huge amount of dried clay chunks & particles. We packed him into boxes & into buckets & into bags, and stashed the biggest part, the main torso, under the big table for later disposal. Some i chucked in the dumpster next door. Some went into my car for later losing a bit in various people's bins. Man was i exhausted by the end of that. I was aching all over. I got second thoughts on cutting a dead body up for disposal, thats for sure. If i ever kill someone, its gonna look like an accident. This kinda thing is just way too much work.

Big hot fella

They cast the big bloke today in bronze. We saw the first pour, which was a handful of legs & arms. They cast well & some bits chipped out of the moulds showed they were good. His torso & head were to be cast later in the day but i had to split. Went home & had for lunch leftovers, which were pastry versions of a star wars stormtrooper helmet & munch's "the scream" while watching Alien. Funny i don't remember those gross bits from when i saw it last i guess i had my eyes shut at the time.

Then took maquettes of the next one to a meeting so they could choose. With some mods one of em got thru. I got bugger all time for this next one, have managed to squeeze a couple of weeks outta the foundry & so i got 4 weeks rather than 2. But then if the last one took 6 weeks then this one being "only" life sized will be easy. LOL.

Have collected an Aldi volin off my mate who acqured it for me. Awesome I want to learn the fiddle. First problem... tune it?

Tassie Knee

I can talk about knees now cos mine is getting better fast. No more crutch & the swelling's right down & my kneecap is back where its sposed to be. I can straighten it out too! Though i won't. Anyway if u want to read about knees...

Having always warned people going to Tassie that Queenstown was the only slippery bit, it come as no real surprise that that was where i fell in a ditch. I had meant slippery roads, but maybe just the entire area is actually slippery. Well why not? Maybe the dirt is slippery from the sulphur in the air & the dirt gets run across the roads to make them slippery when it rains.

We had stopped for a photo opp on a curve where there was a bit of run off to park the car. I got out &, as you would, i attempted to cross a tiny ditch to get a better view, and my foot slipped. I managed to catch myself on one hand & made sure the other hand was in the air holding the camera. Landing on my hand was no fun cos that hurt, and it basically just held my butt off the ground by 1cm. It is important to note however that i didn't actually fall on my arse.

Jo climbed the hill in the meantime, and did the dance of death down the hill, managing to avoid falling with some fancy footwork. Val took off up the hill & we both yelled out that it was slippery. She never heard us she said later. Anyway she went down like splat & i was most annoyed none of us was filming as we fully expected it & it would have made a good movie. She was fine tho & even her camera which bounced a few times was quite OK.

I didn't seem to hurt my leg at the time but i must have cos the next day my knee would randomly do this "collapsing" thing on me & that was kinda gross cos it felt like the bones were sliding off each other & going the wrong way & so it was pretty untrustworthy. Took 3 days or so get a bandage for it cos of it being Easter weekend in a strange country. I just tried to be careful with it. It didn't hurt much considering there was sure something funny going on there.

Have my suspicions that driving the tiny car & its clutch didn't help tho, cos that day i'd done most of the driving, and it never actually swelled up till after we got home a week later, & i'd driven half way from Melb to Sydney in the one day & that was a pretty painful thing to do, tho i wasn't gonna admit it & make Val drive all the way, cos like being a highway you would think even a bad clutch leg would be able to get you there, eh.

Anyway its put me off thinking i should get a small car with a clutch in it.

Tassie: the Sea Shepherd

While we were in Hobart we stumbled upon the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin. Jo was real pleased as checking out this exact thing was on her Bucket List, something she referred to sometimes & i never knew WTF she was on about til i got home & saw a trailer for the flick of the same name. Its something to do with a list of crap u want to do before u die, a course.

Anyway they were doing tours of the ship! Hey whatever ship it is, going on a ship is always fun. So we went & hung out there in the dusk with the wind coming up & it getting colder. The ship's painted black with skull & crossbones on the side, & flies a jolly roger. It comes with a grand set of huge scrape & gouge marks near the bow which it got from ramming a japanese whaling ship. It was very homey inside. People take on 12 month rides on it as volunteers. They get paid nothing & the food is entirely donated & its all vegan stuff. They go out & try to save sharks, seals & whales & whatever else they reckon is worth a try. The tour guide chap was a little pessimistic in that he fully expected sea life to be all dead in the southern oceans in a few years anyway. So doing a tour of duty on the ship was maybe a futile gesture. So on that cheery note i was kinda left alarmed but not the slightest bit alert cos when i asked Val later on what did he actually mean, she hadn't heard it & made something up that didn't help me at all.

They had parked the ship in Quarantine & he said in case we were wondering why, its cos they had been filming whales being killed & normally the whalers stop killing to avoid being filmed but they hadn't this time, they just kept killing & let them film. When the ship got in to Hobart they were directed to Quarantine & the Feds run on board & confiscated the film. But like they had made 80 copies or something (like you'd fully expect) so it was kinda just a show of force. It was filmed by some cable tv show in america, for a 2nd series of some show that rated wildly for the 1st series so this footage is going to get out there regardless.

The inside of the ship was self decorated by what seems like people with a litle time on their hands (like on a long sea voyage) and it was real cosy & nice. A massive DVD collection in the lounge room with comfy chairs & a bar & a Skullery to make food.

We left there all inspired to do a fund raising art show for them. Cos really if any of us were fit & young we'd be on there like a shot doing a 12 month stint or what! Awesome.

Waxing

Spent the day waxing in the studio til 3pm, when overcome by tired i went home & fell asleep. Quite like this make up yer own hrs business. Though i can see some avenues for things to get outta hand. Luckily paying rent for a studio is a bit of incentive to get off my ass.

So anyway now i'm bright as a button this evening & i guess i should just sit down & work out stuff on paper. I need to construct a new armature for the next life sized man & work out some curtain setup for security against prying eyes cos this ones secret. Not really secret i guess just incidentally no-one should know WTF i'm making. At pain of death etc. Personally i reckon the less secret it is the less people going to care. But that only works if nobody cares in the first place, and sadly a surprising percentage of people do care, far more than you'd expect. Anyway the secrecy thing is gonna be a bit of a drain on the enjoyment of the project which is a shame, for me. But then its just another requirement i guess for a customer, and thats what ya do.

A studio in Arncliffe is coming up, where i'd get more space and broadband in the rent. Could be good. I'm really over the people next door, they have about 50 cars in various states of wreck & for sale etc on the street & while my leg's been bad the lack of parking is even more a pain. Also they're so damn noisy. With them & the airplanes a day at work is headache.

Rotten sorta day

Had a rotten day with my knee. It went "over" in the morning & then hurt like hell all day regardless the repeated anti inflammitries & codeine. I did nothing much except learn to walk with a cane on the odd hop about.

Found out this evening that i had agreed a long time ago to be executor of the will of a fruit loop. I must have agreed yrs ago before i had any conception of what it entailed. I have no memory of agreeing & it horrifies me now.

She wants it all to go to one child & none to the other, and that one child cannot be trusted with money as they are also a fruit loop & so there'd need to be a trust fund set up or something.

So I wish her a long & healthy life eh.

And to top off an indifferent day the ext HDD i had all the tassie pics on has shit itself. I froze it & now its kinda working... desperately trying to retrieve the pix off of it. I had copied off the jpegs but left the RAW files only on there. So its kinda depressing if i lose em but not entirely despairingly tragic i guess.

Riding vs Driving in Tas

Lets get this question out of the way straight off the bat: ride a motorbike or drive a car? Which is better in Tas. Having been there twice on bike & now once in car, i reckon i can comment on this one.

The advantages of a car are kind of compelling cos you can go any season and you can carry any amount of luggage & collect crap all the way like a new pair of shoes cos yours got wet & not have a problem storing it all. You can even have an esky so you can have available food! And in the rain you can just sit there as you drive thinking, gosh i'm glad i'm not out there freezin my ass off & then having to dry all my clothes by a fire at night & getting there with my luggage full of water. So there's a bunch of areas where cars trump bikes from a great height.

However I have to say i have decided that motobike is the way to go.There's 2 reasons for this.
1) No roof. Roofs, & the associated pillars that hold em up, they keep you dry, but they stop you seeing a whole @40%-50% of the landscape at all times. Yes i mean the sky. Cos the sky there is massive. Like the mountains are massive and the trees are massive. You need the tops of the trees and the sky in your landscape. Sorry, u can't have them if u in a car, esp a small car.
2) On a bike you're Alone. Even if you travel with 100 other bikes, or a pillion, while you're riding inside your helmet you are alone & what u see goes in your brain straight thru yr eyes & you smell it thru yr nose without it needing to be translated into/from what someone else thinks by someone talking about it. A place like Tas needs you to be able to take it in. You don't get to appreciate it when someone sits next to ya exclaiming all day. Even if they're saying "oooh thats beautiful", well hell i know its beautiful, thats why i'm here, and i'd rather just absorb it without putting it in a box all the time. I'm sure this can vary depending on your co-driver/passengers but out of 4 people in yr car u gonna get one who thinks there is need for constant commentary. Which is also ok sometimes but like i said, in a place like Tas u need alone time.

Back from Tasmania

Well i been back for a day now, been for x-rays for the knee from when i fell in a hole near Queenstown, been hacking up a lung (left) from my tasmanian respiritry infection, and generally doing what is pretty normal after a holiday.

Yes i could have guessed that just sitting on my ass at home for 2 weeks would have been cheaper & easier & have less negative effect on my life & general progress, but there you are, don't ya just have to take the chance?

I'm gonna present the last couple weeks in a series of subject headings, cos looking back thats the way it fits together. So read on... when i get writing...

In the meantime i went to see the big feller in wax today at the foundry. I had to OK the wax before they started putting the shell on there for casting. i'd been worried about his face cos it'd been the last bit i did & it'd been still a bit soft when they moulded it. But i was real pleased. He was lookin good the mould had been a good un. He is gonna be one big mother or what. I stayed there & made a wee thylacene & left it there to be cast. They let me chuck in a few freebies with each big fella, as well they should. They're happy to have the work now as business is a bit slow, what with the economy & all. I better stop typin & get on & make some waxes actually. I need to make a model for the next life sizer & it'd be great if i got some small things thru the foundry cos i been gettin nibbles thru the website. Though they usually spit it out once they find out a price. Bronze casts are exxy things.

Bloggable

This weather is the flamin pits. Get totally soaked every time you venture out. And i'll have to venture out again in a moment. About to go to Tassie for a bit. Not taking a pc, so will be out of bloggable range i imagine, but will take loads of photos with the new canon g10. Did a shakedown last nite to see if it works & the outcome is i learned a lot suddenly about file formats & RAW & how to see those pics once you have taken them... cos it ain't as easy as your common garden .jpg file thats for sure. Its funny how fast you can absorb technical info when its your new camera, LOL.

Bewdy. Better get packing, i got some things to find.

See yez all on the other end- to the one person who's reading this (thats you!)

Packin

Packin for Tassie. Took a housemate out with me to the shops, i got a pair of shoes & he got a kitchen sink. Both of us feel a sense of achievement & that the day weren't entirely wasted.

Now that i'm not

Now that i'm not doing much sculpture, you get to read about the petty BS of my boring little life. I quite lke my boring little life though i think i have it very easy & i know i'm very lucky, tho lke they say a MAN would consider it good judgement & skill etc. However i'm not just a woman but also i know luck when i see it thanks.
But anyway i thought i'd mention something i don't think much've. People who say "i work in IT" with that downward inflection on the IT as if to say, move along, yer too stupid for details, and this s how you spell I.T.: I.. T....
And then when i say what kind of IT they say Virtualization, which means thats enough bugger off now. Just cos i too work in virtualization to a certain extent i have even strung out said person to the point of mentioning VMWare itself but it never gets to the point where i get any actual information. Cos i'm hideously polite I don't push it any further for fear the person actually knows jack shit about their job & is trying to fob me off by using a 6 syllable word lke Virtualization. Anyway i have narowed it down to either they reckon i'm stupid & they don't want to bore me & waste their time, or else they're scared they gonna expose theyself as stupid cos they dunno nothing about what they're supposedly doing. Which can happen in IT & can cause people to worry about losing their job everytime someone sneeze upstairs.
Anyway if i didn't have to communicate w this person often perhaps i would not worry bout it but there u are i am stuck with it & these little things knaw at ya. Beng the only thing we have in common it wd be good to have a proper chat but it seem one of us is too stupid, or both of us, i dunno.

Down tha shops

Went down the shops to buy some staples for the trip to Tas. Got a 6 pack of sox that are plain black with "pow" "smash" "crash" etc on each one. they will mix & match nicely. You can always have a "crash" with a "bang" after all. Dunno wtf my sox have gone.. i have only 2 pairs left now so i been going without most of the time. Have become a bit feral since i'm not going to work. Luckily i do have enough undies etc, but sox, i have fallen down in that area. Heh heh. I wore my work clothes out for beer yesty cos in my new place i actually don't have anything else. Luckily my friends don't mind. Or they just used to it.

They were playing kill-yourself music in Big W. some teenage emo drip must have chose it. Wrist slashing music, I was getting so terribly depressed i couldn't wait to leave. I had some PJ's in my hand, for the trip, in lovely gaily coloured stripes & i was so affected by the music i found them commenting on my joke of a life & my lost hopes & dreams. I knew i wouldn't be able to look at them again without the connotations so I threw em back. One song after another.. each as bad as the last... "i'm not goooooood, i'm hopeleeeeessss, i want to diiiiiiiie.." minor chords & nothing good in it at all. How do they allow it? Everybody walks out of there suicidal. You know if just HALF your customers act on that suicidal impulse, you're out a lot of customers, Big W.

Sydrail sucks

I got an sms from james did i wanna go into town for Bavarian Beer. Well why not eh. Sure it would write off the entire day but it would be nice. And hey, its only a few stations on the train from my place, and the station is but metres from my door.
Track work. I always thought, poor bastards, as i drove past the station & seen people lined up outside waiting for teh rail bus cos of the bloody trackwork.
Hey - today it was me.
I got on & said, i don't have a ticket. He said some mumble. I said can i buy a ticket when i get there. Mumble. OK then let's see if i get booked.. He drove lke a kamikaze, going places buses ain't sposed to go, to be able to stop at each station on the way. When we get to Central someone told him he was a bad driver. I thought that a bit mean & he told them to fuck off.
He drove ok. We took corners on 2 wheels sometimes but that could have just been the bus.
Anyhow free ride.. nobody give a crap when we get there.

Beer was nice. Expensive, was it ever. But nice. After 1 beer i made poor james walk all the way to town hall so i could buy a mini tripod for the tassie adventure next week, and i was looking for an Ultrapod 2 but ended up with the "FUN" tripod: Ultrapod Mini... it is to real tripod what anodised blue shuffle is to real ipod.

After more beer n some food walked down the quay to see the big cruise liner there, Millenium it said on the front. It not as big as the queen mary. i saw the QM come in at dawn a few yr ago. now that was a biggun.

On the bloody long bus rde on the way home i put on my new eyeglasses to see how that was. I wore them all the walk home then & when i watched tv at home. I could see clearer. But when walking across roads or down stairs things were not the right distance away & not the right angle either. Stairs were weird they were not flat they had an angle like you could slide down em. Crossin busy rds was a bit stupid really it was not the moment to try out yr new glasses. Survived but didn't feel like a good way to do it. is this what i got now, unreality comin in thru the peepers, bugga.

Bathroom Stuff

This morn i realise that a low bed is not so easy to get out of & maybe should do something about it. I might be ebaying for a taller one eventually, some nice but cheap ikea thing maybe. Its either that or put the bed on a layer of milk crates, but even i have some shame. Ash's old bed frame is a bit too low for those rough mornings when everything hurts. Its cos i been stupid the night before, but i'm probably never going to stop doing that.

Then i go up for a shower. There's 2 housemates & they both have GFs & there is a move of product into the bathroom that lately seems to grow every day as the GFs move further in. It all make me feel even more unsofisticated than usual, as my idea of extravagant luxury is moisturised soap that squirts out of a bottle & smells like nuts, on special at Bi Lo. Large seethru bags of tubes & bottles are turning up full of stuff branded with names i never even heard of. The one shelf near the shower which used to be sparse is cluttered now with stuff & my lonely blue bottle of shampoo is almost invisible up the back. Luckily they don't seem to spend loads of time in the bathroom though so i guess its just a feelng like there's 5 (or 20, if u see the bathroom) people living in this house, but as for concrete effect, not much.

Big night

Argh my back's a killin me i been trying to make shelves. Cos the foundry dudes have made such a disaster out of my work space (everything sticky wth uncured silicone rubber) i need to use the floor over the other studio, and my back ain't up to this kind of sudden working on the floor abuse for a period of 5 hrs without warning, so now i'm gonna pay..

The shelves are morphing into a strange modular design (or lack of) which could turn out quite Ok. In a way its heaps better cos it means it can be carried by just me alone in sections, so ya boo sucks to asking for help. Have had every possible variation of problem tonight, from the tape measure tricking me (2 mm extra at the start!) to having the wrong kind of screws (too long & too big a thread which split the wood edges) to uneven floor (so everything's f'ed) to shiteridden drill that could not screw in 1 screw properly, to bent drillbit, to buggered phillips head screw bit, to wrong jigsaw blade angle (incredibly difficult to cut at all) to cutting thru a milkcrate (that was OK: just stupid), to self-unwinding bloody wood clamps & even a tool vibrating into the jigsaw such that the entire kit & kaboodle went off angle & buggered the entire cut... twice.
But hey - a bad workperson blames her tools right.
Those freaking tools totally suck!!!

Got the ebay camera for $6.50, hopefully it won't have the same issue that dad's has.

Mucked around

Mucked around today, 8.30-11am spent in cafes. Bit long but i won't do it again for a while.

Went home & found my bit of wood. Its the right thickness exactly & width perfect but a bit short in the tallness direction. However in my twisted mind i think i have a cunning plan & i'm pretty happy with it.

Waited round all afternoon for a call from someone who said they would meet up, & made sure i would be available to get to the studio in the arvo, but the call never came. If i had a dollar for every time wasting that has been visited upon me i could buy a decent studio but if i had an hour back for each thats been wasted i would live to 120.
Well you get that if you deal with humans. Perhaps it comes from humans being able to contemplate the future, which they reckon animals can't do. Humans contemplate the future, put you in it, and leave you there cos in actual fact, a lot of humans, perhaps because they are not that damn advanced from said animals really, CAN'T contemplate the future very WELL.

On ebay there's a film camera just like dad's broken one, current bid .99c, so after i snipe that at 6.30 i'm off to the studio for an evening of bookshelf making & pizza.
Diet pizza as i'm now on a diet, day 3.

Dammit

Dammit i left out 2 bits of wood when i ordered my bits of wood. Bugger bugger bugger. It would have fit on the one big slab too, but except they have cut the other pieces of wood & now the offcut is in the wrong shape to fit the 2 bits i need (which are of course the longest bits & crucial).

Damn. Typical. I did expect some total fuckup.. its a very complicated bit of kit for yours truly to attempt. But here we are baulked at the gate before even getting started. Dang.

Also annoyingly i left the bit of paper with my measurements on it at the wood shop & so i don't actually have concrete proof that it was me that stuffed up, nor could triple check it last night when i felt like i needed to. But i'm pretty sure it was me & not them. Oh well. I ain't going to get another bit cut, i'll just cut it myself. Its the 2 sides, so even if the wood is a bit thicker it will look like i meant it.

Bookshelves

OK today i changed my bookshelf plans from a 4x4 or 4x5 cubes bookshelf to a 3x4 just cos it will be tons easier to make. It needs to fit in the space between the wall & the fireplace, traditionally a total pain in the ass to work with in old houses. The room's got a moulding round the bottom of the wall (whatever the technical name for that is) which is sticking out 2-3cm & is 30 cm high. How massive is that. Nice, orright, but with that fireplace its painful for fitting furniture & your bed never fits bloody anywhere. Anyway i decided that since they are shelves, & since shelves hold things up, & since things often weigh something, i want the weight to travel right down the sides to the floor. So i can't make it 120 wide till it gets low enough to be 116 wide, where the moulding is. Cos then the weight is all caggled up. Let me draw a diagram...

This shows ya where i reckon the weight goes in the 2 different designs. In the first one the weakness is going to be in the bottom shelf there & eventually it'll bow. And not to mention the 2nd version is much easier to make & looks nicer cos its simple.

So now its gonna be 115.8cm across the main part of it (to fit space of 116cm) & the top piece of wood is gonna be 120 to just fit in the space (space is 120 up there) & keep some dust outta falling down the sides. Then the insides will be made of 37cm cubes (except they only go back 25cm so they ain't exactly cubes). The wood is 12mm thick so fingers crossed i calculated ok.

I'm all excited about it cos i spent hrs working out the design & changed it a number of times as technical & aesthetik problems come up. It shows u how challenged i really am i reckon. Cos look what it ended up, could u make anything more boring? But i'm still excited. Worked it so it all fits on one piece of 2400mm x 1200mm MDF & so its pretty cheap. The board is 32 bucks & the cutting is 25. So u can't make it any easier really. I'll just glue & screw it together & paint it white & it will disappear against the white wall, there will just be objects floating in squares on the wall. Well thats the idea. I'm just hoping i calculated it right & it'll actually work out. Pick up my bits tomorrow.

Moulding

I got up early & tarted up his hair & bits of this n that. The foundry dudes came about lunchtime & set to it, covering him in sticky white rubber, starting at the feet. I learned a bunch straight away from seeing how the plasticene wall round the base was constructed. They worked efficient which is definitely what u like to see when you're paying for it.

Then went to the Dr appointment, for 3pm... waited till 5.30 to get in. I was not happy. Last time i waited an hr, this time 2.5 hrs. It was just for a test result but now i need to go get another test. Dang hell .. what'll it be next time, 5 hrs? I better get myself a decent novel. And some valium. And some vodka & some rave music.

Evening off. Feel weird. Bored & dunno what to do. Watching shite film on TV, Warlock. Not one of Richard E Grant's best, tho he doesn't have much to play with.

Found a DVD of Galaxy Quest down the local media outlet for 10 bux. I love that film so much that i invested.

They're gonna pay me the first payment for the big feller, they reckon it'll be in my bank by friday. About time to send the 2nd invoice already. Anyhow first thing, i'm gonna get me some new sneakers! i been sticking 2 bandaids & a bit of gaff tape on my heel to wear these ones. Lot of blood otherwise. Top shoes but i guess they've had it. Not that i'm penniless, but haven't had time for wastin on such fripperies. It'll be a celebration.

Next project.. lose 20 kgs .. err try to anyway.

Passed!

I worked all day on his face, drove meself a bit nuts. No time to go buy bikkies for the customers' visit, they get Twisties & Jelly Beans, its lucky i got them. And then when they came to see it in the evening, they liked it! It passed :) So tomorrow the foundry guys start moulding him in my studio about midday. Sweet! I have to do a little finishing touch to his hair tomorrow morn but only cos i wanna, they were happy with it.

Phew how cool is that. What a weight orf.

Its starting to get cracks, i sure wouldn't have wanted to take another week on it.

Slice of face

I got Deepy to help me when i sliced off his face. This time it didn't go down like a cowpat, she caught it & it lays majestically looking up from the worktable. I finally realised, u know, like, when it offends thee strike it out: it was time. Not perhaps the best decision the night before they come to see it but i prefer to consider it Brave rather than Stupid, thanks..

Anyway he's got a face again & its time for me to go to bed. Its better i think. I will see in the morning. Zzz

3 stooges

Counting down what i hope are the last days of this big dude in my life. I been texturizing him up & thats coming along well. I bought a piece of outrageously expensive bandsaw blade from the sculpture shop, they cut it into pieces & sell each peice for 20 bucks. You can use it to scrape your sculpture with its teeth. I bought a long bit & then cut it up into 2 bits & then at least i hadn't paid so much for this here tool ;) Also i got the right size for my hand & its comfy to use. Anyway with that & the old butter knife & the wooden tools & my fingers, I got a decent repertoire of marks i can make.

One thing really bothers me & that is that cos of his massive scale his arms & legs look disconnected. They aren't, they are on the right places, but cos there is such a distance between each bit & the rest they appear to be. Cos i'm too close i guess. But it all comes down to where is he going to be placed, if he's on an 8 foot high plinth then its no probs, but since i still hain't met the architect its too late to work with perspective isn't it. Rush jobs suck.

I took an hr out to go see a house for sale. Its was lovely. Fibro & wood place with a wee faux african safari bar area from the 50's i reckon. An old lady been living in it forever, so the oldness is genuine & the place was immaculately kept. A young couple outside in the yard were saying how you could build a new house in the back yard, while living in the old house, and then knock it down. It make me a bit riled that people can be so stupid. Such a beaut house, why don't they go buy a dump instead? Stupid assholes & they obviously have the money to do something so dumb...
There were at least 50 people there for the viewing. This first home buyers rash is pretty severe innit.

On the way back i stopped in at Chukkas to pick up a burger. In the carpark were a bunch of large girls on large bikes. Off for a pootle around. And of course one tiny minded retard in an enormous SUV who was blocking the entire carpark while waiting to take a park from one of these gals... he had obviously not seen the bike in the park & in order to not appear stupid was pretending it was what he had intended all along: to just sit there & wait 10 minutes while she put on her helmet, etc.
I'd parked @3 steps away where there was a ton of parking BTW.
Anyway these gals are statistix waiting to happen, its so wrong, one nearly fell off just taking the corner onto the hiway & the rest followed her in scary way into traffic... I got stuck at the light for 10 mins but incredibly caught up with them 2 lights later they must be doing 2mph. Surely with a raft of >1000cc motorcycles you can go a bit quicker than that. Its embarrassing & kinda depressing that people of my sex & that probably like motorbikes can be so like the 3 stooges. Except the 3 stooges probably could ride. And there were more than 3.

Suit

A suit came to see the big feller this morning. He was very nice & he picked out a thigh as a problem & i sorted it right out with his advice. He got it right too, it looks much better now. I cannot believe how many people have input into this sculpture. Anyway he was happy with the whole thing then, couldn't pick any faults, & i even got to keep the footy shirt they sent me, as long as i wear it to the unveiling.
So i have to lose a bit of arse by then but thats fine it was one of my next projects anyway, losing some arse, and whatever else i can misplace.

Anyway i emailed off some pics to the rest of the committee & they like him but his face is not close enough they reckon. Fair enuff i'm sure. I been doing his head so long i have got lost in it & strangers walking thru the studio have commented by saying exactly who he is, so they can recognize him, so i was hoping he did look ok. 3d may be working better than 2d in this situation. Still in the end it needs to work both ways & there is obviously need of more work there.

Feeling a bit tired. i think i do tend to be the kind of person who buggers about for a few days procrastinating, then works for a few days really hard, then buggers about, etc. Though having worked 7 days a week for the past few weeks, til i drop each day, has probably made me a feel a bit jaded. Also the printmakers are there quite long hrs now each day & its like working in someone's face or pocket they are just too close. Anyway the glorious weekend will be here soon & i get the place mostly to myself on those 2 days so bring it on.

Finally posted the contract and an INVOICE today so yippee i might get some income. I been burning thru the savings lately pretty fast. Gosh a new pair of workpants and a $20 electric kettle purchased today i am splurging.

Looks like i will have to stay in this studio for the next highly secret project i have. The other studio has fallen thru their landlord is being a twat. So how can i make this wide open bit of studio into a secret cave? Hm. And can i handle more months of the dreadful noise from the twonks next door?

My inner scheduler is still offline, it crashed badly yesterday when the suits didn't turn up it never quite got online again proper at all. I forgot to tee up dinner at sushi with the marine biologist & the programmer like was loosely pencilled. Bugga.
Will probably never get in sync again, i will have to wing it from now on. Once you miss a collection of events, you got to jump on the time line like it was a train passin thru & you just can't go back & pick them events up again or you will not get on the train, and be stuck in limbo.
Though i suspect i got too busy a schedule actually. How come i'm apparently not doing anything but this sculpture, yet i have every day at least 2 things to go to & 2 people visiting me... plus the rest.

Went home played Wii.... killed loads of zombies. This would be pretty ace on a big screen eh. Maybe i could project it on the wall somehow....

Off my face day

Last nite i stayed up late working on him, doing 7 different sets of eyes, this morn i get up at 6am & straight out there & make new eyes again. Not happy. The answer is simple, u cannot have open eyes when a person is grinning broadly with their mouth open, its just a fact.

The people who were coming to view did not make it, their transport broke down. The foundry guy made it though & he actually stayed for about 2 hrs & helped me sort out some of the worst bits on the big feller. How about that. He's seen plenty of statues & he really knows what he's talking about. We worked out why the left arm looked too short, and fixed it; why the legs looked unfinished, and made them look finished; and worked out why the eyes would not work & what kind of eyes he needs. What a fantastic day's work :0)

After that i was restless so i went home to check email & depending on what arrived i would go from there. Sadly i fell asleep & awoke to find i had totally forgot my day's plans cos here was the phone ringing to wake me & it was Jen who was waiting at the studio for me. And before that i was to have met her at a show someplace & bugger me if it wasn't totally blown out of my head. I remember i did have to ask someone earlier what day it was so its possible i'm a little overtired & it all just blew outta my mind even though it was one of the 2 fantastically important things for the day. I reckon cos the viewers didn't turn up it put me right off my stride. But also too tired.

Anyway Jen helped me with the big feller too & by the end of today i felt quite happy though he is showing signs of cracking & thats a definite worry.

The day before the Viewing

Half the day was wasted in Dr waiting room for a check over that i'd booked in ages ago, bit silly i should have been working but sometimes u need to put yr health first for a minute. Anyway then i didn't get done quite enough... and i buggered up his eyes. 7 times i tried to fix em (approx) & in the end i got a passable set & had to go home to bed. Set alarm for 6am i will get in there by 7 & people will start arriving at 8...

Is all made harder by the fact i have no clear picture of what his eyes should be like, i think he's even got the buggers shut or mostly shut. But people don't commission a sculpture of a bloke with his eyes shut eh. and then how much open? and where is he looking, since he wasn't actually looking in the first place?

Blown up

Lightning blew the cable modem away so no post yesty. Over the past 2 days the big feller has come good-ish. I'm feeling much better this evening than i have been since i started the project. Maybe it WILL be OK! One more day to work then Wed they come to see it. I'm really hoping it will be so great when they see it that they won't want anything done to it. Ha. Well i'm "visualising" it eh. That works sometimes. Anyway the clay is drying out hardcore (pun) and doing any changes will mean smashing a bit off rather than gentle toolwork. This clay is funny it doesn't crack but it likes to dry out. Has a very hard rubber consistency i guess i would say. Its very good for this purpose. You can work it with hard tools once its harder & get different textures happening. Though thats not always good cos you can ruin it with too much tool. But then, you know, the wet clay will just adhere on to the dry! so if you bugger it you can renovate it. Nice.

Its now a matter of staring at him & changing the bits that don't fit quite right into being good bits. Time consuming thing on such a big fellow. And its in 3d so its creep the thing round a bit now & then too cos hey it was ok from that angle & now its totally shite 10 degrees round. His head is improved, his face is OK now, lucky number 7 i think it is, but i will need to adjust his head to fit behind it. Its difficult up so high. I'll be up on a milkcrate on the table to look down on him cos i'll need to see the top of his head. Never tried that yet. Hope i don't fall off there i'm not so good at heights. It would really suck to break an ankle anyway. Or any of the other bones I have here.

Most visitors tell me he should have a bigger package. I reckon its OK as it is, and they are just joking anyway. But while i'm on my soapbox (or milkcrate), i hate this modern trend of giving statues massive protrusions as if the whole sculpture was all about their crotch. FFS - no matter what they did to get famous, there's no subject who wants to be immortalised like that.

Anyway feeling less stressed ths evening. You don't realise how stressed you are til it loosens a bit. I have started daydreaming about the next thing i do, what will it be. i will have a few days during which i should be starting the next project but i reckon i could slip in some other stuff too. My latest daydream is to make some bookshelves. A grand plan is it not. Well they aren't ordinary bookshelves, oh no. They're the ones with little cubes, so like 4 x 6 of 1ft cubes making up a bookshelf. You could alternate books-a sculpture-books-a sculpture etc. Or glass bobble - books - japanese toy - sculpture. Or in my case crap - more crap - books - junk - crap - books - unidentifiable. And paint it some colour. Or white, cos the walls here in my rented room are white. And then it would disappear & there would just be cubes of STUFF hanging suspended there. Awesome.

Rounded

The big man is too rounded.. losing definition. Weird, because i reckon i know where the dents should go now, but yet they seem to be disappearing worse than when i didn't know em...

Anyway he is coming good, and is the same every time... You just have to work about 5 times longer than you expect & then it wll work. The first 80% of it is just despair. Then if you can keep slogging along, you start to get hopeful a long time after sensible people would have chucked in the towel. Its not exactly a relaxing way to work though!

Have found a great new tool, the butterknife i usually use to mix moulding rubber. It has a lovely ripple in it. i wanted to get a hacksaw blade like i usually use to get texture & form, but this knife is great.

Worked til 9.30pm by one fluoro light. Had laptop there & managed to watch 3 movies during the day & evening, mostly while i worked though. Gran Torino (not bad), 2012 Doomsday (disappointed ths was not a Zombie movie as i expected but rather a shite godbotherer film that ultimately made no damn sense anyway - avoid this film like the 10 plagues), and Last holiday (great tho incredibly lightweight). Had the work projector for the films, working on the wall there. And the ancient Cambridge pc speakers i found in a dumpster at work pumping out the volume trying to compete with the pouring rain on the roof. Can't beleive those speakers they are so good. A bit of distorton in very bassy things at almost 100% volume. But you understand every word in a movie, with those speakers, very clear.

New technique pt 2

Hm i forgot the most important thing, that is using beer instead of tea.

A new technique

Hey i have a new technique, i make a cup of tea & roll my chair over to the other side of the studio near the printmakers desks, & sit down & stare at the big man to pick out whats wrong with it. Comparing it to pictures & why does it look funny here & there. Its quite a useful technique eh.

I better find something soon anyhow, time's short. Need all the tricks i can get. It got to look awesome by wednesday. Though i still intend every day to actually finish it. Yeah yeah i know. But hey you know i have to keep it damp & soft til they seen it, in case they want me to make some changes.

They finally seem to have sorted out the contract... so i may even get the first payment soon. Yay.

Home sick

Home sick this morn. So much for i will finish blah blah crap.

The newly unemployed housemate is here tarting up the place before the real proper exterminators come in & fumigate the flea infestation. They're doing the people next door too cos it looks like a local plague. I know i got bites the size of my head across my back they seem to be getting a lot more aggressive. Anyway stuff it. But i reckon i will make myself scarce for a few days cos those chemicals can't be too good for a person.

I also found out today that there will be the pitter patter of tiny feet thru this house & since i was last on, i get to be first off. Thats OK but i've come to like it here. So will be a bit sad. I got a few months yet though. Yesterday i found a house nearby that has life sized concrete lion and tiger in the front yard. How cool is that. And i can walk to the best sushi in town. Ah well. Life stinx - and we better enjoy it while we can , eh.

Squirter - the big scientific advance

A housemate has loaned me the best invention since they started paying people for sculpture. Its a water squirter device. Its a 5 litre container with a hand pump on it & a long tube with a wand on the end with a trigger, and you squirt water out the end in a variable sprinkle action. I can water the big man sculpture, even the top of his head, without even standing on tip toes! What a fantastic advance.
I won't get the massive forearms that i was heading for using the little hand squirter bottle that i just broke, but i also won't get that RSI i was working towards either. Marvellous. What a wonderful invention :)

Crunching time

Today i decided that no matter how long i have, the sculpture will take that long to make. Therefore if i decide i am gonna finish it TODAY then i will finish it today. So i decided to finish it today - why drag it out eh. Soon after that i realised i was booked for sushi with a marine biologist mate so i will have to finish it TOMORROW.

But i did get the right arm working much better & i think its just about ok now. i just got to commit :)

Have also got to the point where i reckon i've absorbed as much anatomy as i can probably use. I've had a bunch of people thru the studio modelling for me. From now on i have to make the sculpture look like itself & not worry so much about anatomy. What i know already will just come out in it anyhows, since i been studying it so hard. Now i just got to make it harmonious with itself. Piece of p*ss... not.

Another thing i did today was to try on a stormtrooper helmet, like from star wars. For some reason when i saw Mark walking uphill to his building at work (i went in for brekkie with my Team) I just KNEW there was a stormtrooper helmet in the box he was carrying. How did i know that? And why was he carrying one? To work? Well there's more things on heaven & earth - you just got to trust yr intuition eh.
Anyway I got to make one of those helmets one day. Always thought they were quite a difficult shape when i was a kid. Maybe i could give it a go now though.

Blackie

Now have a lovely black skid mark thru the studio. Housemate visited & was a thigh model for the big man. He has one excellent thigh with fab definition & the other one is a bit crap cos he broke his leg. On his way out he attempted a wheelie out the studio gate on his motard but due to too much slippery clay on the ground he just left a 20 foot long blackie instead. When the building owner returns after her hols she will prob be a little bemused by the intensely clayed floor and a strange black line.

A present from the cats

The cats left me a half chewed cockroach, they had pushed it under my door during the night. guess thats their way of saying "thanks"for the food etc. What could be nicer, or more heartfelt. Unless it dragged itself under my door to escape from the cats' torture & then carked it in horrific agony 2 ft from my bed. Poor lttle crapper.

The big man - the slog continues. Ben come over to fix an electrical device for me & gave his crit. So now some big changes have been made. Its time to leave the mathematics (at times) and concentrate on what looks real, as opposed to what is mathematically real. So if his feet look too small even though they are the correct size well then they got to be embiggened. Cos in the end who is going to be measuring it, they are just gonna be looking at it & saying, his feet look too small. I mean like with anything you got to finally look to your audience & that will guide you.

I sliced off his face - kind of a nasty thing to do really... but you got to be brutal when things need changing eh. His face was quite ok but not quite in the right place. Unfortunately i forgot it weighs some kg's and before i could say 'gosh i wish i had thought of putting my hand under it' the face had hit the ground & flattened itself like a pancake. Or a cowcake which was more like what it now resembled. Bugger. But if you can do it once u can do it again. Sigh.

Trivia night with some motorcycle racers. Stories of grotesque injuries & gross amount of bulldust, bragging & wild invention, physics, mechanics, and best of all, laying sh*t on everybody's riding skills & temperaments. Very funny guys. The pub serves the hugest food portions i have ever seen in my life. The steaks are at least 4 times the size of what you would expect or indeed could ever eat. I was scared, could not order anything, in case i got it. In the end i order a caesar salad without chicken that arrived with loads of crumbed & fried chicken in it. I left half of it all there, though done my best.

Beergoggles

I have some new glasses, eye type. These ones i'm sposed to wear all the time not just for reading. They are a bit disappointing cos i was hoping they would stop my left eye from being so fuzzy, and that i'd see loads more things than before. But they don't do either. Think i need a 2nd opinion on why i can't see so good with that eye. Its very annoying. Anyway i got a fright with these cos i put them on to look at the big feller & it suddenly looked crooked like it might fall over. But it was just the stupid glasses eh. I did the CheepSpecs version i picked the frames that gave me the biggest bits of glass & not care what they look like. I hate those skinny square glasses they are pushing nowadays, they'd be like looking thru a tiny slot. I ended up with a frilly edge round the ear pieces that was a bit peculiar but WTF cares really. I just wanna see. Anyway things are a bit clearer but of course I don't suddenly understand the things i didn't before, i don't see more things than were there before or had any particular epiphany really. So i feel a bit peeved now & glad i didn't spend 400 bucks like is the average price for trendy glasses. So no new visions that enhance my life, I guess shit eyes are just what you get when you get old. By my age i should have reproduced anyway & the kid would be grown up & thats all you're supposed to last for anyways. After that you just get more & more likely to get eaten by a tiger or something. Every little misability tips you closer to that moment when you don't see the grass move in time.
Anyways i'm getting off topic a bt. I'm still here & if i can manage to continue to cross sydenham rd without being killed that is the most dangerous thing i do.

The big feller is creeping closer to being a it more human, still. What a big job it is to make such a big dude. Now stuck on making folds in the clothing. I think i need to just sit down & do folds for a day. I have the footy jumper they sent me so I should be able to just set it up a bit like in the subject photo & do a clay sketch.

Got some new stuff from the moulding shop, its for rotational moulding. What is that u ask. Well its when u pour some liquid plastic in your mould & then spin it so the liquid makes a thin shell inside there. Apparently this stuff is really strong when its set. Anyway i'll check that stuff out.

Ralph came to visit, checking out the new studio. I'm starting to get into this studio visiting business. I never did get it before. People would invite me in the olden days, hey come to my studio. Or people would say, i'd like to come see your studio. And i never could figure out WTF would anybody want to come to a place full of half finished unco work & a pile of rubbish that was usually in a small peice of a sh*thole of a place. But now i get it. Maybe cos my studio is actually nice. There's a fridge and a kettle and even in the other room a sofa & lounge chair and coffee table just like a lounge room. And my space is organised into little areas with coherent uses. Maybe i've growed up :)

Sunday nite

Today went OK, had some people visit, and Dr P modelled for me in the footy jumper & that gave me lots of Progress. I also cut large chunks of flesh & chickenwire out of the big feller & thats helping, cos in some places you need concavity... it ain't lke the Indian sculptures idea where u don't have any concave areas. Or maybe it is. You can have one convex area lower than another convex area, after all.

I went home & there's a housemate lazin on the lounge & i asked did he have any thigh muscles & yes he does, but only on one leg. But thats cool - one leg sure beats none don't it. He has agreed to come model tomorrow! Yay.

The blue cat kept its head under my right wrist while i wrote emails. It didn't seem to mind that it got a knock whenever i pressed the enter key. Later when the laptop was off charging it lazed upon my lap in such a lazed way that only a cat could manage. At least i don't seem to sneeze now from the cats. I still get a sore eye though if i rub my eye after being anywhere near a cat... but if its true i don't sneeze anymore, then thats way cool.

OK then

So yesterday I cut off that recalcitrant left arm, and then went to lunch for a redunded colleague at work, & after that i never got back, i popped home & fell asleep for 5 hrs & when i woke decided i would have the evening off in anticipation of 2 full weekend days of impending incredible progress.

So this a.m. after a terrible nights tossing & turning (yeah 5 hrs of sleep in the afternoon was maybe a touch too long, not to mention a night entertained by the noisy neighbours' love life & all the damn traffic), i went in to do battle with the big feller. I wasn't feeling that positive really. But anyway i sat down & drew some anatomical stuff, copied it from a book, to get it in my head, and set to adjusting this arm. I welded it a bit different to before & crossed fingers it was enough different in the right way.

Yeah so it went well, it doesn't look deformed anymore & feeling positive again.

It seems that i basically need to cut the bugger right up & remove all the excess foam that i put on there when everybody kept telling me he was Big. I mean hell- the guy has the same skeleton as himself as a thin man, no? Thusly you are an idiot to make a "big" armature of a "big" man are you not...

In case yer wondering how did i solve the issue of how to hold up a 15kg arm while i welded it, well i did some dodgy instead. The arms are made of square tube, so i cut thru 3.5 or so walls of the square tube, and then bent the arm where i wanted it, and then welded that. So i never actually took the arm right off & there u go. I did that up near the shoulder & at the elbow to change the way the arm hung down on 2 planes.

Yesterday i run into someone who asked me if i'd like to do a talk at the art school about my stuff. Pretty nice to be asked eh. Though giving speeches never been anything i wanted to do, i spose its a foothold into a different career , again.

Decisions, decisions

Didn't get much done today tho i did work hard. Started the moulding off a couple of smaller ones that i need to do & had a hack at the big feller. I reckon some hard decisions need to be made & I can't put them off any longer. Like cutting off that arm thats sorta not working at all & maybe even the other one as well. Trouble is once they are off i will need someone to hold them up while i weld them back on the right way. My assistant who is very busy anyway has only skinny wee arms so she would not be too good holding up a 15kg arm while i welded it back on. But then maybe i can just cut them off and throw em away & make completely new ones.... thus they'd be light with no clay on em. Man i would love to just start over entirely, but can't help thinking i would face exactly the same issues then as well. So what can u do.. you got to just suck it up, like they say in the armed forces. Or somewhere.

Well after yesterdays optimism i was bound to have a comedown eh. Thats how it goes, up & down. Then i will make some resolution at about 3am tonite during a sleepless night where i wake in terror constantly; & then when i follow thru on that resolution tomorrow, like chopping off that arm & measuring the head, it will come good & i'll get optimistic again. Sigh wish i could just avoid the sleepless night part, its gonna be boring.

Cousin Chris

One of the cats slipped outside this morning, and refused to come back in. The smarmy look on his face read stuff you, & i realise I am NOT a cat person as I expect pets to see sense when i tell them stuff. The damn thing was going to just get more fleas out there but did he listen? No. After advice from the cat owner via the phone I chucked the other one out as well & shot thru. I went toward Maroubra & hoped it would p*ss down on the bloody things.

My cuz Chris came to visit today. I just happened to be setting some yogurt in the yogurt maker & there comes a call, he has some time to kill so he dropped by. He parked his gigantic semi trailer across the neighbour's entire front strip, our driveway, & the next nature strip. That was right hilarious as that neighbour is so anal about parking her car in front of her house that i reckon i would have sh*t myself laughing if she had've turned up. Sadly she didn't, though she must have later wondered why her tree had massive amount of damage as if some giant truck had taken half of it out, but, like a ghost in the breeze, it was all over & she never knew.

We went for donuts as is the tradition when my cuz visits. So much for my diet that wil have to start tomorrow instead.

Then i went in to my work & struck a blow. Its actually improving & i could have given up in disgust yesterday but its improving yes. I decided to act to prevent the falling off the table which is induced by the hypnotic swaying of the big man. I would weld a strut under his leg. That required surgery & removal of as much material as poss from the leg armature & then setting fire to just about everything for metres around& burning myself with spatter. Have a neat hole in my leg but as its just under my knee where i have 7 fleabites already, you would never know except for the black edging on it that it were not just another fleabite. And weld burns are fair things - they hurt for a moment then stop, unlike those cheaty little chickenwire cuts that sting relentlessly til you swear.

I enjoyed making marks all over him to delneate his leg muscles. It really does help to make t look loads better. They follow the contours much like old banknotes have contour lines. Is it cheating to have contour lines AND 3 dimensions? Nah!

Quiet yet boring

Another quiet day.. went to studio & did some math again. Comparing the maquette to reality is a bit surprising.
Then made a panther thing. This is hopefully going into some auction that will raise money for the zoo. It needs a longer back. Will check some lion pictures for tomorrow.

Then Paul popped in he's just been to Thailand. We went in search of some cafe in Earlwood that was sposed to be awesome. but ended up with self serve tea bags at the studio. However we did find a place that sells industrial cakes & they sell factory seconds cheap. Its about 12 steps from the studio unfortunately. So i will remove that memory from my brain as soon as i can. $4 for a box of brownies is just what i don't need. After the last 3 or 4 days of hard work i have lost a notch on the belt & thats good.

Then once the printmaker had evaporated from the studio, about 2pm, i unwrapped the big feller & went to work. I added a face & a collar which really brung the top part into focus nicely. Had been having endless trouble with the shoulders but once the collars on there it cuts it nice into chunks. Normally you better off not adding the clothing detail til the end, but then i been breaking lots of rules that i had before, so hey why not, as long as it does actually help i'm in there.

I been having a bit of weird things happening i got cold sweats & losing my balance. The losing balance thing i worked it out today, its cos i'm up on the table & working on this big bloke, and he wobbles. So he's right in my face, swaying slightly, & thats making me feel wobbly. Luckily i can grab his arm & he catches me. Its a great excuse to weld on a supporting strut on the bent leg, for sure. The big thing wobbling is not a great thing anyhow. In my mind the welds are rusting rusting rusting. The cold sweats are just me sweating from working hard on a warm day & then a slight breeze chills me right out. I reckon i need some of those clever moisture wicking clothes people buy to travel in. Or a fan in the first place, but a fan would dry out the clay so i can't use one.

Tax excursion

This morn was Tax appt #1, I rode my bike to Bondi Junct & the tax dude did my BAS for me. The bike has furred right up all the alloy is covered with white fur cos of being parked in the yard. Looks foul but it started straight away which was kinda unexpected & ran great. Even had petrol in it, which is rare.
Doing my 2nd ever BAS statement... Sadly he needed a book & a calculator & a lot of work to do it & the next one will be a pain too cos i'm going to not have a weekly wage for that one & the calculations will change again. So looks like i won't be doing that myself, if it takes an accountant an hour then i reckon it too hard for me.
Then i bought a slice of Cambozola cheese cos bondi is the only place i know sells it, for a treat... its a mix of camembert & gorgonzola. Noice. Then home, ate said cheese on crackers, slept til 3.30 then got my act together & got to studio by 5.30, then worked till 9 or so. Was very sore today all over feel like i done a few rounds of rugby league or summink. Have had 3 very hard days work so this being day 4 at least there was a bit of a change & a little rest.

Using a cement trowel to work the clay.. i have to use very large tools! its quite funny. Gradually he is becoming a bit more human looking.

One important trick is when you think something needs to be big, and you keep adding to it, and it never looks right, getting bigger & bigger but never working, then cut it all off & make it small & you will find out it never was supposed to be that big anyway - it just looked like it should be.

Big Day

Another big hard day in the studio. Being Sunday it was the best day to go hard at it. So i did. Its funny its very addictive i did try to stop a number of times during the day for a break, washed hands carefully, set the kettle to boil, but always had to go poke some bit of it & before you know it i'm up to my elbows in wet clay again & realise i'm exhausted so i go wash hands again to get clean then i poke it again & get sucked into it yet again, etc... in the end i just knew my mate Mike was coming for pizza for tea & i had to create a massive 3m plastic bag to cover the big fellow with so i got into that for a while instead. But yeah kept going over to poke at it & the usual...

So that was 10am to 5 or 6 with 10 mins for lunch. Its ok i'm not as tired today as yesterday & no new cuts to speak of tho i got plenty of fleabites torturing me. Its ok though once you got more than 50 they balance out & you can ignore em all.

Written off

Boy am i written off. Started at 9am & worked like crazy till about 3. Jen & Val came up from the Gong & helped out big time today. We covered the big fellow in clay. Incredible amount done in one day. He looks a bit robotic but the life will hopefully get in there with work. I found that one thing that i was wondering about, which is how crap will it look to have a ton of tiny finger marks on such a big figure, well it worked out that i used my palms instead, and really thats kind of the right scale for "finger marks". LOL. I'm totally stuffed now though i can hardly move my hands & arms. And have many many cuts. Dunno what hurts more everything stings & there's the itchybites as well. Anyway having the evening off tonite & back into it tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday which is the best day to work. There is absolute silence in Marrickville except for the airplanes, & no-one else in the studio. If i do as much tomorrow as we did today the thing will be finished. Of course i won't, cos i'll be alone, and probably still sore & whingey, but thats cool i'm going well time-wise.

Covered in fleabites from the cats flea collections. The house got fleabombed today & probably the only surviving fleas are the ones that were with me in the studio today.

No bludging today

Yes i actually worked like a whipped slave today. I dunno if it was guilt or i just need a day off between hard days (don't we all). Shopped for some hardware supplies, 10 bags special K clay, moulding rubber, got all that back to the studio by 11 & chickenwired all day till 6. Acetone surprise worked quite well on the foam & i wired the bloke up with some long strings of wire tied tight to hold the chicken wire better. Wish i knew how strong it does have to be to hold up 2 or 3 hundred kg of clay but i hazard a guess that it should be stronger than what i have made eh. Fingers crossed anyway. A cup noodle for lunch... a grand part of the new diet (not).

Now the clothes are in the washer, and i'm in the shower & off to jude's birthday party.

:)

:)

As the title

Bludged today. Shiftless sod that i am, i did SFA for the major majority of the day. My excuse , again , was i was doing my tax. i did like 5 minutes of tax in an extravaganza of monumental procrastination the likes of which haven't been seen even in my lifetime. It lasted from 9.30am til about 5pm. Then i had a nap. Then i was awaked by a phone call that crashed my phone completely. When i finally got the message it was that i had to get to the studio by 7 as had been prior arranged to weld something on someone's motorbike. So i had to haul ass then outta town or at least over to the studio... where i realised that the tiny surround of aluminium that was part of the swingarm would melt off way before i could weld the bit needed to be welded so i didn't do it anyway. Aluminium has a lower melting point than a steel bolt head & the chances of ruining the little circle were like about 100%. But you know its nice to be visited by a pair of handsome fellows with a motorbike. You do need that sometimes. Anyway then i did a few hrs of chickenwiring on the big bloke. Till my fingertips hurt quite a bit & i had a fancy new array of cuts on my arms & the cd player skipping like it took too much crazy drugs had about done my patience in. Also I went home specially to catch everybody as one of the housemates just got back from Antarctica. Of course i am here alone now & have been here an hour by myself. Young people, i dunno... they go out a lot don't they.

I had a cunning clever idea while driving about what to do if the foam body was still too big under the chickenwire. I could find out what solvent melts foam (acetone?) and fill a spray bottle with that & give it a spritz where i want less foam, and then a mallet hit on the chicken wire to cave it in & there you are. Ths job could get really too easy couldn't it... ah, no. I need about 800 more clever tricks like that i reckon.

Back to the usual

Back went on me this morning. Ah the pearleasures of being old, fat, & never doing any exercise. Been expecting it really. Anyway its just a warning but i'm now at home having tried to have an afternoon nap. Was woken by a large crashing sound & the blue cat has taken out the housemate's new addition a very large framed photo of the desert. And most of the stuff on the side buffet that had been nearby. One "i-didn't-do-it" cat that has learned nothing & a big mess.

This morn the people paying for the sculpture came flying in for a look & a meet up. They were very very nice & i even have an extra 2 weeks to do it in. Feel very relaxed now & entertain visions of going snorkelling once this summer...

Spent the evening wrapping the big man in chicken wire or more strictly, Vermin Netting. The new version is the same stuff only a roll is about 20cm wide & thus easy to cut & less blood involved. I used the whole roll & i'm going to tie it on with string or thin wire tomorrow. Forsee i'll need to peel some of it back to remove foam later. i skinnied it all down quite dramatically but there's bound to be some protrusions to deal with later. Still its good to get on with it. Will never find out i've f*cked it up unless i get to the point where i can actually tell.

Then i got a takeaway Pho soup down the shops. The dang thing come with a bag of raw meat which kind of stumped me. You got to wonder if they taking the p*ss. Anyway i boiled the soup on the stove & chucked the raw meat in & cooked it. Weird but i guess thats what u meant to do. Lucky i had a stove handy. Was very nice though.

Brought to my attention

It has been brought to my attention that i am perhaps being a little intolerant with my last post there. Maybe i am, but its my blog, dudes! And i'm not saying people shouldn't talk to each other i'm just saying i don't wanna be there where they're doing it, at certain times. I wanna be in my own studio alone where I get left alone when i need to be alone. Ain't that what everybody needs?

Also being looked at like i'm some strange species by a printmaker is something particularly offputting... Its like they totally have no flamin idea where i'm coming from whatsoever & consider me just such a weirdo. I'm not that different, geez. Can't they just ignore me. People ignore me just fine in my normal job.

Concentration & irritation

This morning got on with it. Finally the planets are aligned & I have my concentration. Sadly I also have a studio in a shared area & the printmakers came in after i'd been there a few hrs & was fully absorbed in my work. The more annoying one was in first, she broke in on me once for some reason (probably to say hello) and then a second time when i was fully furiously working to tell me it was ok if i turned on the cd player. Then she noticed i was wearing my ipod when i reefed out one ear to listen to WTFH she wanted. I reckon I might have a particularly cold slack vacant look on my face when i'm working & cos i'm off somewhere else & it takes quite some time to use my face again when i get waked up. Not to mention to effect on me of being suddenly violently disturbed for anything less than a friggin house fire is much like having a bucket of cold sick poured over my head & i probably have the appropriate expression for that somewhere in there as well.

And then once she'd totally stopped me in my tracks & f*cked up my thoughts she stood there looking at the half done bust i was working on. I totally can't stand it to the point of utter homicidal apocalyptic destruction when people look at my unfinished work without being asked to. Its still inside my head at that point & once someone else beholds it, particularly if its not someone i know or like, then its broken far as i'm concerned. I start looking at it critically too & it just makes me stop. Its just so lucky she didn't say nothing.

There is no judgement til its done thats how i like it. No higher brain activity allowed whatsoever. And no third entity in the picture. Just me & it & no third person's expectations & dislikes & smartass comments. After its complete i welcome every single-celled organism & upwards to come give it some, but til its done its not bloody done & its not out there.

Anyway once there were 2 of em there I decided OK i was distracted now & i packed up & left. My dream studio is one where i'm Bloody Well ALONE thanks :) Passing traffic of humans is OK & i do like company but just cos i'm in the same room doesn't mean i'm in the same headspace eh... i mean fairy nuff i do chat sometimes but surely a person can see when another person is really hard at work. I dunno maybe printmakers never get there.. (lucky no printmakers read this eh).

Sunday fire

Late start due to sleeping over the parents' & it being junk day i had to do some cleaning up about the place. Picked up some cool junk though.

On the way to the studio i let a pizza scooter in front of me. I like to take care of scooter riders cos they a bit easily damaged. Anyway this guy went straight ahead at the next right turn & was totally collected by the car beside him & splayed off down the road in front of me. Leapt up he was OK but a bit worried he would lose his student visa if the cops were called. Anyway he was OK & enough witnesses so i left. So i probably shouldn't have let him in, eh. Who knows, maybe he would have hit me instead. That probably would have been cheaper for him though cos of what a bomb i drive. Oh well how can u read the future.. what would be the best even if you could read it. My car is a lot harder than modern ones, he mght have got hurt more.

Studio.. set to on removing the glued on foam on the legs... that was a brutal & not very satisfying experience though it come off like a jigsaw & should fit mostly back on again.
Then I welded a cross piece for a hip type situation & promptly set fire to the torso of foam. I was kind of expecting it, to be honest, tho i didn't quite know what speed styrofoam went up at. I'd cleared a route to push it out the back roller door into the street & let it fizzle away to nothing, or if it wasn't that bad I also had a bucket of water nearby. The one thing i didn't quite expect was that using the magic helmet, when there is a bright light in front of me the visor stays dark. Thus i stood there after welding for some seconds in complete darkness until i realised it actually MUST be on fire, or i'd be able to SEE it. Hmm logic.. Anyway a few cups of water or 10 put it out & we were good to continue on, though its melted a love handle right off the poor bugger. For the next weld i got a bit of plywood offcut for shielding & that went fine.

Then i thought to myself how i was welding on a wet floor in holey sneakers & setting fire to stuff & i was alone in the place. Those printmakers wouldn't like it if i burned all their papers; though i can't really see any great loss there myself... they're prints right? they can just print em again... but tripping over my corpse tomorrow morning was probably not good for em & would be tedious & a bit of an anti-climax for me. I went & sat down for some rice crackers & cashews lunch & read an Art in Australia from 2000 for a while so the floor could dry out.

I've put the leg armatures a lot closer together & maybe they're too close now. I find this stuff very hard to work out, but keep trying is the only solution.

Late in he evening went to Talldave's as he is about to leave for round the world bicycle trip with his GF Gaby. I will miss them a lot. He gave me some useful sculpture stuff like measuring calipers, an industrial fan, a leather apron & some moulding rubber. And a bagful of wax :) Yum.

Now its late, and the cats are bored again.

Rainy day

Today i slid down a couple of stairs & pulled every joint in my left leg by landing on it funny. I blame the cats, but it was my own stupidity, and the fact they are slippery stairs. Just cos the damn cats are being cute & i was playing with them at the time & one stabbed me with a claw. These cats really are like satanic aren't they. They are Distractions, cause me a lot of Pain, Annoyance, Time Wasting and make me Sneeze. The good part is they like to pat my finger with their paws. OK i don't think it weighs up does it.

Anyway i went to the studio & sat down to do tons of maths calculations on the sizes of various limbs etc & i've stiffened right up. Gonna give today away & call tomorrow a busy one. I know what bit i want to adjust first, the way the legs join to the base. After that it might not need changing, and i can actually get on with it. So step one is remove a bunch of carefully glued on foam so i can get to the steel & then cut it off & reweld. I wonder if polystyrene foam can catch on fire?

Sitting

The subject of the big sculpture came today. I been packin it for ages about meeting him & people have said he is 2m high & u cannot put your arms around his thigh thats how huge he is. Anyway he is about my height & a big bloke but not terrifying, & very nice. There was one bit where i said, get the thinnest bit of wrist, and they said, well there is no thin bit. But anyway. He was very patient with us & Talldave measured him all over & i drew around him onto the wall for measurement & then we got him to do the pose. We discussed how he would have walked & i didn't realise i got his leg so wrong as what i did, though its not real surprising as i only had a pic of the side view for the lower leg section, no front on stuff.
I ended up driving him to the airport cos we couldnt get a taxi for him being it was 3pm & shift change time for the whole of sydney.
The head colds come back & i was exhausted after that.
But thats excellent, cos now its all up to me. I should have met the subject a while back, would have made it easier, now i have to make some major changes, but from now on its up to me to make this thing, i've got all the info & what i don't have now i will invent based on what i have. Which is good. Next appontment is the committee coming next week to see what happening. Til then i just work.

Got home & the cats looked so bored & wishing to go out that i let them. The fat one got stuck on top of the damn shed & i spent hrs trying to get the bloody thing down. I got countless mozzie bites & spiders on me & tree stuff down my shirt. Eventually i just left the damn thing up there & it worked it out.

Guess who's not falln for the cats sad little eyes again.

New found strength

Today i moved 220kgs of clay into the studio. Picked it up from the shop, it came in boxes of 2 bags each, for some reason. The girl there tried to help, she managed one box with 1 bag in it, but was sittin on the floor cradling another box, stumped that she couldn't lift a full one. The rest of the time she was on the phone so i basically did the lot myself which was a bit f'ed but there u are. To tell the truth if i had read on the side of the box the bit where it says "50lb" i wouldn't have picked them up either, but i managed the lot from the shop to the car. Then from the car into the studio i did most of them but i opened some of the boxes & done them in 2 trips, cos i suddenly had read the bit where it sez 50lbs & thought, hey that sounds like a lot more than 22kg. I dunno maybe in america they don't have OH&S or something, here in Aus 16kg is sposed to be the limit on a box or else it should have a warning on it. Not that i didn't feel they weighed something, but hey they look nicer in boxes than seperated out.

Anyway i survived that & seems the head cold isn't holding me back at all. Wonderful.

Then later went to see the subject of the next sculpture. Nice man, the pose is a bit of a worry but since the last one was no worries & turned out to be an arse, this might look bad yet turn out OK yet.

Strangely enough i was sure i had bought a motorbike from this very house some yrs ago. They reckon it was gutted & renovated in '04 & they moved in in '05, which seems about right to me. How strange that is. But my mate reckons i'm dreaming & all the streets there look the same & have the same elevation & same sorts of houses & maybe he's right. Sure looks just like it though, with a lick of paint.

A sick day

Chucked a sickie today. Didn't have to ring anybody to tell them i just didn't turn up to myself. I suppose nobody caring about you might get sad after a while but its nice for the moment. In the evening i took the big table Juz gave me to the studio in the back of the chariot. Nobody there so i carried the mofo thing by myself. I guess that was the entire day's energy spent in one hit. But i did it. It was like the energy expended turned into sweat immediately & dripped off me. It seem like a lot of energy involved. As long as my back don't seize on me tomorrow I will asume i got away with it.

Now to find some cheese for tea.

Massive

Had a massive day in the studio. Having spent half the night trying to breathe thru this new cold, and thru a miasma of toxic cats piss tear gas, which seems to be the overwhelming personality of my shared house at the moment, i got to the studio a bit late, via Mascot steel to get a respirator for the melted foam chemicals. Perhaps the respirator could be useful at home as well. I don't think they make a cartridge for cats piss though.

I soon realised i need some liquid nails that actually works as opposed to the useless shite fake liquid nails that i got in marrikville hardware that was double the price it should have been even though everything in the store is 40% off for renovation sale..... won't bother going there again, even after the renos, thanks... can't imagine paying full price in there. How do inner westerners deal with the gouging they get? Have often wondered that, being i'm from the blurbs, & while a small locality tax is OK, since rents are maybe higher (but maroubra ain't cheap actually), its not usually a reasonable markup is it..

anyway enough warning people off there, it sucks ass, but its 10 minutes drive to big hardware & i got some fast action liquid nails and some cans of expanding foam (love this stuff). Then spent the day gluing foam slabs onto the big bloke & then trimming him with the hot wire. And sweeping up massive amounts of foam offcuts into a huge pile.

Anyway a massive day & the fact i stayed upright during it a plus. Hopefully this cold will just be loads of sneeze & not much else.

The day was remarkable in that i actually felt like i was enjoying myself sometimes. Hope i feel that way more often as the project continues.

Posing

Val made special delivery of a book on bodybuilders Posing. An older 70's book, its notable for the peculiar facial expressions as much as the physical expressions.

Today was spent getting over yesterday. its funny how tired you can get & not realise the problem is that you're tired cos of yesterday until you've wasted half the day trying to get started, and you would have been better off staying in bed watching movies. Sigh. Antihistamines to stop the allergies but the sneezing continues. I guess non sleepy antihistamines are also not very working antihistamines.

Stated cutting and sticking big foam blocks on the armature. First thing happened was i busted a crap weld & then i removed all the foam & rewelded half the bloody armature & added some strengthening braces. I won't want to do this later so best do it now.

Anyway got to feeling a bit crap from the formaldehyde that apparently is a chemical you get when you cut foam with a hot wire, i dunno why a preservative would be bad for you, when we eat so many preservatives, but there you are. i guess formaldehyde is the preservative you get when you're dead, maybe its to make sure you are or somethin. anyway shoppn list for the hardware is liquid nails & respirator with some heavy duty mofo cartridges that filter out EVERYTHING.

Skeleton

My Assistant & me made the skeleton today. I spent some long times bending my brain around the calculations & could not readily repeat any of em. This is not very professional but there u go. The numbers worked out the same or similar by doing it a few diff ways so I take it as OK. I had to take the model, which had been made according to no dimension in particular, and measure it all up to scale up to 240cm high which is 1.25x the height of the subject including 5cm for shrinkage.

Then we had to work out the angles of stuff. Argh. Ended up using a template. But some people do this enlargement thing by eye, so maybe its possible that the stuff we bodged will be OK.

Its pretty tall. I'm going to have to work out some kind of scaffold to work up a bit higher, milk crates are not that great they kind of wobble a bit.

Big day's work. Tired.

Electrickery

Ben come over in the morn & built me a hot wire foam cutting machine in like 1 hr. Amazing. Sadly he tried to explain me some stuff about how electricity works & that never helps much.

Then i went to an engagement party, it being old V day, so there was pink balloons, and the cakes were in the shapes of a pink & a blue motorcycle helmet, but luckily that was as far as the pink sh*t went. I chatted with many old BEARS motorcycle racing people & the bride to be was laughing at young Tom with his terrible limp cos they both broke their legs on the same weekend at the track & she was pretty good now but he'd just got off his crutches & was a bit crap walking.

And then back to the studio for a crit from my mates from the Gong. They picked out a bunch of stuff for me & i fixed that. Very helpful. This sculpture is going to be a full team effort, cos everybody i know on planet earth is contributing something. I'm going to be doing 5 hrs of speech just thanking everybody.

Big Plans

OK so i have big plans for the next 2 days. Since again today not much got done.
I spent an hr or 2 calculating the steel i needed, and calculating body parts & how far out i was in my work when compared to photos. Then i went & got some steel. While waiting for it to get cut up i started a chat with a car dude, i realised he was a car dude cos his outfit matched the flash paintjob on a riced ute outside. He'd left his lights on so there u go immediate opportunity to break the tedium of standing there staring at nothing by tellin him he left his lights on eh. And i found out his car had an s20 engine in it & i exposed my complete ignorance of those kinds of japanese utes.
So then when my steel was ready the steel guy sez hey you wanna back your car in so i went to do that. And hey as soon as i chucked it in reverse my car was runnin like poo. I backed it in to the place going Putt Putt Putt & obviously not too good. After having chatted car stuff i guess if i had any shame i would have been embarrassed about it all. Not to mention the missing bodywork off the back that flew away in the airport tunnel the other week.
So then i drove this malfunctioning POS toward home & popped it into a car repair. They worked out it was the coil. OK i walked home from there.
So i got some steel and some exercise, and those things cost me total 500 bucks.

Big nuthin

Did bloody nothing sculptural today. Uncovered the sculpture model a few times. Poked it with my finger twice.

Found out that the subject is actually shorter than 2 metres. Rackin my brains now to figure out who told me 2 metres so i can punch them, i think that stat has caused me a lot of issues. Latest is he was 182, 185, and the guy himself reckons he was 188. Still not 2m though he is more like a real human now, i think i can do this.

Bought some household dimmer switch parts for the electrical device Ben is going to make for me to melt foam so i can cut out chunks for the big version. Also got some RCA & din plug sex changers that i have since lost, hopefully they are in the car someplace, so i can run the electronic musical devices into the speakers and the macbook at oncet, thus putting weird noises into garageband.

Has tea with Talldave in the studio. He thinks its a great studio.

Cracked it

OK finally, after much days of work, reckon i have finally cracked it. Its finally looking like something similar to what it should. So after i done that, i made a cat to celebrate. Its going to hang on the wall by its tail & look at passers by.

Assistant

I had the aid of an Assistant this morning, the nite before I filled the small fridge there with iceblocks (that never froze), cordial, cold drinks, and we started early this morn 7am to beat the heat, but luckily it never got so hot we needed to quit. I sent her packing at 11ish cos 4 hrs was enough to get done the stuff I aimed at. We welded up a 1m x 80cm base with big wheels & a tall stick coming up off one end with props to make it strong. Thats the basic base & prop to hold the figure steady & then off that prop i'll weld the skeleton once its fully realised where the bones have to go.
Wow it was lovely to be there alone (with my excellent assistant). Those printmakers worry me a bit. When i mention doing any real work there their noses kind of wrinkle. They looked horrified when i mentioned 55K for casting costs. Its like they think i'm crazy & made it up, or else they don't like the idea of art = money. Gawd knows. Gawd only cares, though. They want to throw a studiowarming & they picked the very night my subject is probably coming in for the one sitting, tho he might do it that night or the next. I might have to be heavy on them i guess. I'm happy to work around people but as someone said, hang on, its a workspace...

Anyway i'm getting the welding knack back again. You have to be as empathic to metal as you are to humans when they ring you at the Helpdesk. They are all different & they all have their quirks & problems & if you treat em suitably it all goes smooth. Its way cool cos welding is something you can get good at like driving. Learning welding & driving were the 2 things that made me feel independent & capable when i was growing up.

Good things

Things are moving, they will pay me, the studios full of useful crap i'm about ready to start work there, and i got a mattress! Wow its like the planets are lining up. Not thats its been easy, its a bit like i've had to line them planets up myself, but the end result is the bit you remember i guess.
Drove friends van to get the mattress took a year off my life when i suddenly thought i'd put ULP in a diesel van but that come OK too.

$

Sent an email asking when they might pay me something. I foresee this project being much like working in ICT. A (member or 2 of a) committee wants something... nobody will sign off anything... massive fail potential... no input... failure to commit resources in time... much stress throughout... unpaid OT at death knell... unknown result, burn out after. If it looks like its sailing down the river of crap in the next week then i'm just outta there. I got to make that decision early, cos its physically impossible to do this thing all at the last minute.

Nother hot day

Gosh i miss the air con at work. Today I parked at work, went out early met the team at their morning cafe, then left them to their torrid workday & walked up the rd & got some Keane Special K clay to test, couldn't carry the "Wed Clay" as well, but it sounds really good on the net, not really firable but specially made for sculpting big stuff as it takes a long time to dry out & the shrinkage is smaller % than usual clay apparently. Sounds great. Grab some of that a.s.a.p. Then moving stuff from old home to studio to new home & from new home to studio.. blah blah blah. Gawd will it ever end. The cats in the new place are strangely absent last few days, tho traces tell me they are in residence.
In between residences stopped to organize a bike pickup for a total stranger who'd been wiped out on his previously spotless much loved & expensively modified but sadly now written off R6. He got carted off in the ambo swearing & i diced with trucks on Sydenham rd picking up bits of his bike while waiting for the pickup. Felt like a long wait cos it was so hot. Sadly the shade had an ants nest, i stamped my feet there & rung some friends i'd been slack about contacting. Emma's having another baby and a painting show. To have a new kid, start another, and manage to paint for a show, we really don't know the meaning of working hard.
Bloody hot day but they reckon the weekend is gonna be 40s both days so i better get some stuff done before then eh..
Apologies for the tedious contents of this blog..

OK then

OK the plasticene model is looking reasonably OK after about 10 hrs work & last nite mum sitting down & studying many photos & peering at it & we discussed arms & legs. Today it started to come ok. Sent some snaps to the customer.
Did a nice little head study for the project, out of loads of little plasticene blobs. Its got a wild grin thats kind of cute. Dunno if it looks that much like our subject but its a nice start to give me back my confidence.
Have some strange ideas that i'm a professional cos i'm being paid therefore i can't ask for help when i need it & its shame to admit can't do something. Have to throw that away. Gawd knows i don't hold back asking dumb questions in my computer job.
Got my dad to help me move my big old filing cabinet into the studio. They are great for storing tools etc cos they can take weight. Also got him to help me rearrange my rented room, cos since the sofa arrived, comfy & beaut as it is, its a bit of a puzzle to get everything to fit. I may have one too many tables. The wax table needs to go to the studio, since thats 'art'. Lets pigeonhole my life, maybe it will work better.
Will continue furniture removals tomorrow, maybe both places will become usable spaces. Hooray :)
Next problem, need some milk crates.

Start over

OK i threw that plaster dude in the corner (rather, carefully lifted him onto some milk crates cos if it goes on the ground it'll never be picked up without a forklift).
Disorganization meant i had to go half hr drive to the studio to get my welder & bring it back home to make a new armature. Though i did return via Stonevilla & check out what they had in "studio" space. Not bad eh but the ground is a bit uneven you wouldn't be rolling anything out of there. Anyway got home, 2 minutes cutting steel square tube, 2 min grinding off paint, 3 minutes of welding (now that i've turned up the amps to blow it away setting) and - walla - a new armature... That sort of thing can take me an entire day when i take it too seriously... Then add a wire skeleton 1/2 hrs work, & there we are. Then 5 hrs of adding plasticene & we're about half way....
Still it looks deformed & i think its just an incredibly hard pose or something... or else i've suddenly lost all my skills... or i'm stressin the hell out too much.
At least the subject ain't sitting for me tomorrow as i feared so i got a little more time.

Soundtrack... Skeptoid podcasts & Dr Who audio books.

Something so wrong

There's something so wrong with this plaster man that i made a wax one last night to compare it. Yes its very wrong. And it cannot be renovated. So i cut off its arms. OK now i think its head got to go too. Crikey its a devastation with the angle grinder & the Big Chisel & chunks flyin everwhere.
Moved my most precious possessions into the studio last nite. My welder & the magic electronic hat that i got recently to weld in. This is a very trusting thing to do as did i mention these are my most preciousssss possessions. So hell i better get there this evening & make sure they are still there. Oh, and do some welding maybe, just some o that stuff you do in yr studio, not that i ever had one before i wouldn't really know. In other people's studios tho i have sat about drinking, so that could be another activity i can do there.
Bought a bunch of steel today. The slowest man in Australia cut it for me. I mentioned he wasn't the fastest bloke they had, to somebody there & apparently he's on medication which has really slowed him down. Well thats OK then, i'm glad it ain't me. Count your blessings, mum used to say.

Its Official

Its official.... its too hot. Think i'm going to be doing the work early morning - sleep all arvo - work evening into late night work shifts when i finally get started.
Move in to studio this evening. Don't have that much to carry unless i do take the filing cabinet. Have coffee & cup. Very important.
The welder appears to come with many peripherals, far more than seem reasonable.
Planning on paper the cut lengths of steel i'm going to need to buy tomorrow. My steel shop they cut to size, might even get some 45 deg angles cut on some pieces, to treat meself.

Day 3

A hot day down the Gong. My last procrastinating moment before i have to fully knuckle down. Lunch in honour of my b'day & Jen gave me a Salt Box she had made from wood & painted, full of salt things.

I hit my head during extracurricular activity. Thinking back to where i was then makes me head ache again now.

Discussed the project, its good that everybody i speak to gives me another hint on how to do it. Eventually i will have the full story & that is good.

Tomorrow move into studio. I joke that i will take a chair & pair of scissors as really don't have much to take. Don't have a chair though so that joke ain't very funny.

Day 2

Work up in weird place. On the floor in Petersham. Though on the floor is correct since i still have no mattress. However the fact i still have no coffee there is a bit of a comedown. Cats try it on when i leave, attempting to sneak out. Their new hobby is the back yard.
Decided on a studio in Marrickville :) Move in Sunday.
Hacked at the model, tried to make it more 3d. Went & bought plaster.
Went to tea in Leichhardt with Tom's family, with the 2 maggotty little tackers throwing spaghetti about & bringing me rocks. Rode the bike over there. Discovered most of the engine is coated in oil. Argh it has always been implicitly dry as a chip this engine, clean as a whistle, dry as a bone. Tom reckons its cos i never ride it. Learned about the Case Study Houses. Got allergic to the dog & went home.
Gosh hope tomorrow is not as boring as this Blog..