I've been a Busy Squid

I have an ever growing number of Squidoo sculpting tutorial lenses. Here's the current list, I hope you find them useful.

Polymer Clay Sculpting Tips and Techniques
Techniques for Curing Polymer Clay
Painting Polymer Clay Sculpture
Building Armatures for Polymer Clay Sculpture
Using Liquid Polymer Clay
Polymer Clay Sculpting Tools

And here are some miscellaneous lenses built to be useful for artists.

Taking Successful Photos of your Artwork
Resources for Figure Artists
Resources for Animal Artists

I've also been named a Squidoo Giant Squid which has really motivated me to want to create even more resources for sculptors and artists. So keep a look out here or on Squidoo for them.

Shop Blossom

Okay, I know I said I'd have non-web and marketing stuff soon and I will. I just finished sculpting a bunch of cuttlefish earrings and pendants (they are just awaiting paint right now). However I have to share my newest web project.

Shop Blossom is a social network I just launched last night, it's a place for any online small business including of course artists who sell their work online to join (even if you aren't an online business you can join if you are interested in the subject). You can create a profile page, network, add photos and videos, promote your business, and discuss how to make your business better in the forums and groups.

This is a new adventure for me, I've moderated forums before but never a social network. I will be moderating it too to make sure no one is spamming, flaming, or posting inappropriate or adult content. A lot of parents work from home, I want them to be comfortable viewing it while their kids are in the room.

eCrater Tutorial

I just finished writing up a tutorial on how to set up a store on eCrater. It runs through all the basic steps to creating your storefront.

How to Start Selling on eCrater

Odds and Ends

Few interesting tidbits for you today.

First of all the brand new Maine Arts Commission Blog. It's focussed on the arts in Maine but is a good read for any artist.

Second off a great armature tutorial courtesy of Jeff at iSculpt.

Last but not least I've added some handmade sculpting tools to my shop. I make most of my sculpting tools myself and through trial and error have come up with some that I really love. I'm now making these for anyone who would like to buy them.

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

Sculpting Background Noise

I can't work in silence, it drives me crazy to not have any background noise when I'm sculpting. Sometimes I sculpt to music but being a former percussionist and singer I either start tapping out the beat or singing along (or both). Sometimes a movie or tv works when it's something I've seen lots of times or a documentary since those often can be just listened to, I don't have cable so that's basically the few hours a week PBS has Nature and Nova on. So recently I've started using audiobooks.

For a long time I resisted, I'm an avid reader so I've always felt that audiobooks are cheating. I still have that nagging feeling from time to time. The big problem with audiobooks is that I can't really afford to buy lots of them. So I've been looking around online for places where I can download audiobooks legally. Here's a few places I like. There are also some podcasts that I like but I'll save those for another post.

Librivox - Audiobooks in the public domain. Lots of classic literature here. I just finished downloading a bunch of Coleridge's poetry. I'm not generally a poetry person but Coleridge I absolutely love.

Telltale Weekly - Some are free and some books are for sale dirt cheap. They've got the first 3 chapters of Bulfinch's Mythology up so far, can't wait for them to get the rest done.

Audiobooks for Free

Project Gutenberg Audiobooks - Most of the human read books here are from either Librivox or Audiobooks for Free but they also have a large selection of computer read audiobooks if you can handle listening to it (I can't).

BBC Radio - Not really audiobooks, they have lots of radio documentaries and other shows (seriously if you haven't listened to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radioshows you must). I especially like their science programs. Some are available for download as MP3 but most are .ram streaming audio so you'll need a player that can play them. I recommend Real Alternative package for Media Player Classic which is free and doesn't have ads or play havoc with your registry like RealPlayer.

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.

Top Ten Signs You Need a Break from Sculpting

Something funny I came up with today (or at least I think it's funny).

10. While preparing for a big dinner you start considering how you could use the cooking implements to sculpt.

9. Your significant other mistakes the clay you stored in the fridge for freshness for fudge.

8. You freak out if anyone tries to organize your studio, the mess is really a complicated sorting system.

7. You own body building books and magazines even though you never set foot in a gym.

6. When shopping you consider buying fruits and veggies for the textures rather than to eat.

5. You think plasticine is the perfect remedy for dry skin.

4. You've run out of room for unfinished Works in Progress, they are now stacked on every piece of furniture in the house.

3. Friends and relatives won't let their kids into your studio for their own safety.

2. You spend all your free time (when you aren't sculpting) online talking about sculpting.

1. You've named your dremel.

Feel free to leave your additions to the list in the comments.

How to Build and Armature Stand

Happy Halloween! In my last post I wrote about iSculpt. This time I thought I'd share a great video that Jeff has about how to build an armature stand to support your sculpts while you work on them. I'm eagerly awaiting the rest of his sculpting videos and I'll be featuring them here as they are released.

Great Sculpting Site

Jeff Lamarche is a pretty cool guy, he posts on some of the same forums that I do and he has a really cool new blog. Go check out iSculpt he's been doing an incredible job compiling lots of useful information and links on sculpting.

In the same vein I've put together another resource lens on Squidoo, this time a big list of links for Figure Artists, anatomy, pose photos, facial reference, and other stuff. Resources for Figure Artists

Prettying up my tools

I've had this little desktop magnifier for a while and always thought it looked so ugly that I wanted to make it prettier. I've been a big fan of the victorian/steampunk aesthetic for a while (though just recently discovered the wealth of cool steampunk stuff on line). If you aren't familiar with steampunk think Jules Verne and H.G. Wells early science fiction written near the end of the 19th century, still confused take a look at Brass Goggles.

So back to the magnifier. First I painted both the magnifier and it's base flat black. On the magnifier I used antique gold acrylic paint and sponged it on which gave it an old brass look. On the base I very lightly brushed on some silver paint to give it a cast iron look. Here's the before and after: