Green Dragon Ornament

I sculpted this a few days ago and rather like how it turned out even though it wasn't what I planned. Originally the dragon was on a glass ball that I painted the inside so it was all gold and green. I kind of dropped the ornament after baking the dragon so I had to carefully remove the dragon from the broken glass and made the egg to attach him to. I only dropped it about 6 inches onto the counter taking it out fo the toaster oven but it doesn't take much to break a piece of hot glass.

The dragon is sculpted from various shades of premo polymer clay tinted with pearl ex pigments. The egg is scrap premo painted in acrylics. It's about 3 inches tall with a satin ribbon hanger. It is up for sale here.

Norway Sidewalk Art Show Recap

Now that I've had a couple days to recover from the art show it's time for a recap.

I got to the show about 8am, signed in and dropped off Odin's Runesong for judging then headed over to my spot to set up. I have to say that I hate my canopy, it takes forever to set up and it's not as sturdy as I'd like. I got two folding tables for my booth and it became very clear that I need another one next time, I just didn't have quite enough room for everything. Since I do jewelry as well as sculpture my spot was with several other jewelry artists. I had a great time talking to them and swapping ideas.

The show started at 9am and that's about when people started coming by. I have no idea how many people came through during the day but it was quite a crowd. Early in the morning I heard someone at the next jewelry booth talking about eCrater so I popped over to check it out and found out it was another eCrater seller that I know from the forums.

I brought along some little bookmarks I'd made with a rubber stamp I'd made from carving an eraser and gave those away to little kids (if you're curious the stamp is of an octopus). That was a big hit. I know a lot of kids like my sculpture (especially the animals) but how many parents are going to get their 5-year-old a $65 Perma-Pet, so the bookmarks I thought were a way to make them a little less disappointed and it worked. Another big hit was the little brochures I printed out aboout my work. I lot of people snagged those so hopefully some will then visit the website and buy something.

I didn't really sell much, just a couple of my small ornaments. Several people were very interested in my sculpture, including one person who said if he wished he had $750 in cash to buy An tEach Uisce (I made sure he left with a business card and brochure, who knows maybe he'll call to buy it).

About 1pm show volunteers went around handing out the announcements for the awards. I just about had a heart attack when I saw that I had won the Honorable Mention award for Odin! Obviously that was the highlight of my day.

About 2pm I had to go up to the gallery for picture taking. I had my picture taken with Odin for myself. For the local paper I had my picture taken with the other winners, US Senator Susan Collins, and some of the show organizers. Afterwards I brought Odin back to my booth and got a round of applause from the booths around me.

The rest of the day went pretty well, and I wrapped things up around 4pm. I'm still recovering a bit, it was a long exhausting day and I got a terrible sunburn even using plenty of sunscreen.

Here's a slide show of the photos I got.

Fire Dancer Sculpt WIP

I meant to post this last week but decided the photos I had taken weren't good enough. Life sort of got in the way of sculpting in the last week, one of my cats passed away and I had chicken and pheasant chicks arrive. Now I've got better photos to share so here they are, the first stage of my Fire Dancer sculpt.
If any of you have ever wondered how I make sculptures like Odin's Runesong, Selkie Emerging and the Fire Dancer balace the way they do I've written an article on it. You can check it out here: Building a Balancing Armature.

Fire Dancer Concept

Here you go, as promised the concept art for my Fire Dancer sculpt. I decided to play with watercolors a little bit for this one. I never claimed to be any good at watercolors but it gets across the idea of the motion and the vibrancy of the colors I want.

And here's a photo of the fabric that was the inspiration for this sculpt. I'm still working on getting the right way of stiffening it for use in this sculpt.

In other news, I now have an announcement newsletter that you can sign up for. It'll go out once or twice a month and announce new artwork, sales, deals, etc.

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Pondering

I've spent a good chunk of the past few days editing cuttlefish jewelry pictures which is quite repetitive and I've gotten to the point where editing photos is pretty automatic for me. This gives me plenty of time to think and come up with new ideas. I don't know how many of these I'll actually make but they're all pretty fun (my mind starts getting silly after a few hours of any repetitive task).

1: Jellyfish necklace. I picture a transluscent bell with beaded tentacles coming out and wrapping around the neck.

2: Salamander sculpture. I'm craving sprign and one annual sign of spring here is when the spotted salamanders start emerging an migrating to water to lay their eggs.

3: Steampunk cephalopods. I'd need to get some gears and other mechanical bits and sculpt a squid or octopus with a panel that opens up to reveal clockwork inside.

4: Dance figure studies. I've found some great reference photos of dancers and contortionists that I'd like to incorporate into some sculptures. I've had the idea of a fire dancer for a while so maybe consinue the theme with different elements.

I think I'm done with creating cuttlefish jewelry for a while. I love making them but I've got a pretty good inventory of them right now so I need to move on to other projects. Here's the most recent additions.

All my Cuttlefish Jewelry.

Valentine Surprise for a Friend

My best friend's husband showed his sweet side this Valentines Day. He asked me to make a Stone Bonds pin for his wife in their wedding colors which were blue and green.

This was just great to do, Danielle and I have been friends since kindergarten and me and her husband set up this up as a surprise. I had such a hard time keeping a straight face when I was at their place for the Super Bowl and she mentioned Valentine's Day and that her jewelry box looked awful empty.

Selkie Emerging Update #4

Brand new photos. Finally got the arms more or less done! So I got to start the hair finally, she looks so much better now that she's not bald.

Larger versions can be found on flickr in my Work in Progress Set


Previous Selkie Emerging Posts:
Selkie Emerging Update #3
Selkie Emerging Update #2
Selkie Emerging Update
Selkie Emerging Concept

Peak Inside My Studio

Studio is a bit of a misnomer, it's more a corner but it's my workspace. So lets take a little tour.

First up here's my computer desk and the brand new computer. Isn't it pretty? Little plug to the Shiflett Brothers that's their sculpting forum up on my screen. My old computer took up nearly that entire desk, I love actually having a little space now for a little sketchpad or just messing around with gadgets. I like having my computer so close to my sculpting area, I can just load up reference photos on the screen.

Okay on to the real sculpting space. Here's my desk. As you can see there's no chair, I use the same chair for both my computer and the sculpting desk, there really isn't enough space for two.

My desk isn't very big but I'm quite attached to it, when I was given it a few years ago it was truly hideous but it clearly was good construction so I wasn't going to toss it in the trash. Someone had tried to revarnish it using a dark brown varnish that was streaky and even though I know it was in an attic for years was tacky to the touch like it had never fully dried. I stripped it down, refinished it, and added new hardware until it was the cute little thing it is today. One of the things I added to it were little brass hooks to I could hang stuff like my heat gun. You can see my Selkie Emerging sculpt that I've been working on and a self portrait bust I started months ago and haven't finished yet. Usually there's also a lazy susan that I use to rotate my sculpts on but I'm using it for an experiment in photography right now.

The insides of my desk drawers are a complete mess so I won't show them to you, suffice to say that they contain tools, paints, and non-clay materials like wooden bases, wire, etc.

Here's a close up of some of the stuff on my desk. In the jewelry box are ribbons for hanging ornaments, cold porcelain flowers, a few pendants I sculpted. Various bottles of stuff I use, isopropyl alcohol, sculpey diluent, liquid sculpey, gesso, various types of glue, some paints, masking fluid. The magnifier is a really cheap plastic thing from the drug store, it was really light so I glued some weights inside the base which is hollow plastic, and to dress it up sponged silver and antique gold paint onto it.

use, shells, glass gems, beads, some of theTurning around behind my desk is the storage. Top shelf is fun stuff that I closed containers have thumbtacks, pins, other odds and ends. The lightning globe is just for fun. And there's my little first aid kit, that's really important. Second shelf is books, mostly art related, some magazines those are mostly Discover and Smithsonian, the little set of drawers has user manuals for tools, some unfinished little projects, and tools I don't use much. Bottom shelf are my tool boxes and pasta machine.

Last we have my big set of storage drawers, top is odds and ends, middle is clay, bottom is fabric some for projects some for backdrops when photographing my sculpts. And my book holder, I built it out of foamcore and soem elastic to hodl my books while I sculpt, the one in it right now is Modeling and Sculpting the Human Figure by Edouard Lanteri.

Not shown is the curio cabinet, hutch, and top of my tv stand where I keep all my finished work, and the area of the basement where I mess around with mold stuff (not so successfully) and airbushing (more successfully).

If you want bigger pics you can check them out on flickr here: Noadi's Studio
Also I forgot to add yesterday that you can check out bigger pics of my selkie here: Work in Progress Set

Selkie Emerging Update #3

With all that's been going on I haven't been able to sculpt as much as usual but I have made progress on my Selkie Emerging sculpt (and some other stuff but that's for a later post).

The base is now fully weighted and bulked out, I still have the clamp there just in case but it's quite stable now. The arm pulling at the skin is done and came out nicely, the other one is giving me a little trouble but I'll get it soon.


Past Selkie Emerging posts:
Selkie Emerging Update #2
Selkie Emerging Update
Selkie Emerging Concept

Video Walkthrough: Lionfish Mermaid

I just completed last night narrating a slideshow video of my Lionfish Mermaid. This video is much like my previous one Odin's Runesong - The Creation, in that it's me commenting and describing the construction of the mermaid. I think I probably get more out of making these videos than you do watching them, it gives me a way to look back and analyze what I did.

New Gargoyle Series

I've been making the Gargoyle Pendants and Ornaments for some time now and people seem to like them. However I've been getting a little bored with making them so I wanted to have a little more variety. Since the next big holiday comign up is Valentine's Day I thought gargoyle couples would be cute. I haven't quite decided what I want to call them, my first though was Gargoyles in Love but I think they would work just as well for gifts between good friends as well so I'm not sure exactly what would fit.

This is just a quick photo, I'll take better lit ones for my website once I've finished adding all the jewelry findings and such. Check out the tails, I think that's especially cute. The only problem I see with these right now is the size, they are quite large, a little more than 2 inches across. I worry that it makes them too big to be worn as a necklace and maybe they would work better as pins or barrettes or just as ornaments? I'm not sure yet.

Christmas Goody

So Christmas went pretty well, everyone got sculpted ornaments from me. My best friends and her husband especially like the dragon ornament I made them. My parents were sneaky this year, I had no idea they knew I was looking into a toaster oven for baking my smaller sculpts with. So they got me this very nice one, which is much better than the cheap $20 one I was looking at which was much smaller. Now I don't have to feel so guilty about the wasted electricity or possible fumes from baking my sculpts in the kitchen oven. I'll still need to use the kitchen oven for the occational really large piece but most of the time I won't need to.

If you look to the right you can see that I've added a Tip Jar. If you enjoy my blog or my artwork please consider leaving a donation or better yet purchasing something from my Gift Page to get something for your money.

Selkie Emerging Update #2

Another update on my Selkie Emerging sculpt. I'm been texturing the fur on the seal half, which isn't very difficult but is tedious and takes time. I've only got one of the flippers and the underside of the piece of seal skin being pulled away left to texture.

My immediate next step is to get the arms finished and give the poor girl some nipples. Then I need to start working out the weights I'll be adding to the base so it won't be so tippy (that's what the clamp is for, it's keeping her upright). Finally I'll do the hair and base. It's actually driving me crazy, I want to work on the hair now because I hate seeing her bald but some of the hair will be touching her arms so those have to be finished first.

2007 Retrospective

So now that 2007 is nearly over it's time to start reflecting on what I've accomplished. Most likely I wouldn't have thought of sharing this if not for Troy McDevitt from the Clubhouse forums who posted a thread asking everyone to cram their 2007 portfolio into one 600x400 pixel image.

Now there's still a little while to go in 2007 so I have a few small projects that I may get finished before the end of the year but nothing significant. While I was compiling this I was able to reminisce over the creation of each piece, what I learned, and the progress I've made. With everything I sculpt there's always something in the end I know could be better but even so I'm really happy with the rate at which I'm improving. As long as I keep learning and improving that's what I think is the most important thing.

Going left to right from the top: Satyr (January), Octopuppy (January), Perma-Pets (ongoing series, started February), Squid (August), Odin's Runesong (September), Lionfish Mermaid (November), Baby Rat (May), Hatching Turtle (July), Frog Ornament (November), Cthulhu's Gems (ongoing series, started June), Cephalopod Pendants (November), Gargoyles (ongoing series, started May).

Doing a Good Deed

The local middle school always has a charity project for the year, where they pick a charity and do events throughout the year to raise money for it. Part of this is the annual charity art auction right before christmas. I've donated 2 pairs of gargoyle ornaments in decorative tins. I hope they're a hit!

This year they are raising money for the Pine Tree Camp, a camp in Rome, Maine, that gives children and adults with disabilities the chance to experience camp activities such as swimming, boating, and team sports. They are currently building Maine's first ever fully handicapped accessible treehouse! Which is just the coolest thing ever.

The auction will be December 12th at Telstar Middle School in Bethel, Maine, from 5pm-8pm. I'm going to try very hard to be there to talk to the kids running the show and see their artwork.

Selkie Emerging Update

So I've finally gotten back to work on my Selkie Emerging sculpt. With the Lionfish Mermaid commission and getting jewelry and ornaments ready for christmas shoppers I just haven't had the time to work on her.

The real tricky bit has been the base. I plan on sculpting over the bare framework I have now with rocks and water splashes so I needed room enough to do that later on but still have the base stable enough now to not tip over. I'm not sure what wood that section of dowel is made of but it's got a bit of weight to it.

Sculptural Progression from 1996 through 2007

This is a slide show video I put together of my sculptures, I've only been sculpting seriously for about 3 years so most of the videos are from the last few years though I do have a few that are older including a ceramic bird whistle I made way back in the 7th grade. It's a lot of fun for me to look back over the progress I've made in my sculpting ability, it really helps keep me motivated.

Geisha Fairy Video

I hope everyone likes the new layout of the blog. I think this one is much prettier and cleaner than the old scribe template I was using.

This is a little slideshow video I put together of photos I took of the Geisha Fairy sculpture I did last year. She was a commissioned sculpture that I did for Tenshi and was lots of fun.

Kitty Approved

Usually my cat Duchess isn't the most cooperative feline, but I managed to get her to stay still long enough to take a photo of her with one of my cuddlefish perma-pets. I think it's cute.

Proof I'm Improving

So the inspiration behind my new mermaid bust was that my client loved my original one. That one sustained some damage so I can never sell it and is sitting in a display cabinet in my living room. So I had on last thing I wanted to do before packing the new one up for shipping. Since I've now done two mermaid busts almost exactly two years apart I decided to photograph them side by side to compare the progress I've made in sculpting over the last couple years. I see a big difference, especially if how well I execute facial expressions.