Ravings Aside

PERSEPHONE - stained glass, Luci's legacy. I had to. Wouldn't you have? Also that was way too many pieces - 56 for the tentacles (?) alone! And yes, those bracelet beads are individual pieces of glass too, all 11 of them. I finished soldering her at 2am on a Friday so I could display her at #SVCC the next day. The shadows are airbrushed, the details painted on with fusible paint and the best part is that HER EYES GLOW IN THE DARK YOU GUYS

On the Persephone detail you can see bubbles in the lips - it looks like glitter gloss! The effect was utterly unintentional - the fusible paint is rather viscous, so it traps air bubbles if you mix it without thinner - which I had to do for color matching. Was sad at first but then I saw how cool it looked so I decided to leave it the way it was. The eyes are clear gloss mixed with blue/white glow in the dark powder (and there's a bit of it in the nose ring as well).

LUCI - I've been wanting to make it for so long you guys it's finally happened I'm so excited. To me Luci is a strangely romantic character (in a literary sense, not in the kissy-kissy sense - although that too because come *on*), so I wanted her to have an halo of bruised roses the color of decay. Which I think I achieved. She is mostly made of a really expensive frosted clear glass that scatters the light and appears white. She's got some airbrushed shadows and a painted face, which was very hard to make look acceptable - and even then she looks like she's just about done with everyone's nonsense. Also, I now now how to draw roses? Which is *really* hard, by the way.

On other news I have no idea where to put it and Luci - right now they're just lying on my floor. They are matched in size, about 36 inches tall - I told the FedEx guy to “print is as big as you can”. I will eventually put them up for sale on etsy, once I get my website going. 

Locke and Key Shadow Box

This is my very first attempt ever at making a shadow box (or a papercraft in general... actually no that’s not really true, I made some paper weaving at some point) and, as you well know, I am a big proponent of the Go Big or Go Home mentality. So, got a bunch of paper, some gray markers for shadows, bookbinding glue, and, just, well, went at it with an x-acto knife. That’s *days* of work right there, and yes, those feathers are all individual bits of paper; at some point I couldn’t figure out how to make the owl, tried to cut it out of this golden specialty paper but it looked really horrid so I just flipped a table and gave up for a while. It sat on top of our fungus terrarium for a while, but I’ve been meaning to finish up a bunch of old abandoned projects this weekend and that one has been at the top of that list for some time. The owl is just thick black cardstock colored with golden sharpie, with highlights drawn with one of those really runny push-down-to-splurt golden calligraphy pens, and the shadows made by scrapping the gold off with the flat edge of a knife; black lines traced in gel pen. The stone cliffside is crumpled gray paper; the fog in the background that I feel really proud of is some special wispy stupidly expensive fancy paper I got at Blick’s. The box has a magnetic “door” that swings open - the unfortunate sibling trio is anchored to the box by the wing only, which is attached with double-sided tape to the edge of the box where the door cuts it. 

This scene is from one of my favorite comics of all time, Locke&Key, written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. 

Overall that was surprisingly meditative and a lot of fun, plus I got to catch up on my re-watch of Supernatural. 

@joehillsthrills 

Night Vale vase 

I had such plans for this. First I wanted to carve it out. Then I wanted to sculpt some flowers onto it. Then I went “FUCK IT FLOWERS ARE BORING” so I wanted to sculpt a PERCHING CONDOR onto its side but by the time I’ve thought of all these things the vase had dried too much so I went with the “creep everyone out at the studio” option and sculpted in an eyeball. The eyeball is glazed, making it shiny and even more real-looking. 

Everyone’s doing it, so I thought I’d also give it a go. Here are the 9 fictional characters off the top of my head that I identify with (which was surprisingly hard, because I like a lot of characters but I don’t necessarily find myself in them). From left to right, top to bottom: 

Nimona (from eponymous comic by Noelle Stevenson) - Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Marvel) - Edward Elric (FMA Brotherhood/manga version)

Li Xiong Mao (from “Freaks’s Squeele”, a French comic) - Harry Dresden (from the Dresden Files books, by Jim Butcher) - Anton Gorodetsky (from the Nightwatch books by Sergei Lukianenko) 

Vala Mal Doran (Stargate) - Esther (Giant Days comic) - Black Widow (Marvel)

Looking at this it would appear that the emerging themes are mischief, empathy, perpetual emotional distress and badass smirks.

Me: Yes

People: GUYS LOOK OUT SHE'S A RUSSIAN SHE'LL KILL YOU!

Me: Well actually-

People: SHE'S A COMMUNIST LIKE WOW DO YOU HATE AMERICA?

Me: Well hold on-

People: IS THAT REALLY WATER IN THAT BOTTLE OR IS IT VODKA? LOLOLOL

Death Vigil gives me life. Actually, anything @nebezial-asheri touches is gold. No, platinum. No, rhenium! This is a terrible photo, but the idea is there. It’s dancing Bernie! The dress is antique mauve, with shadows, capelet and central brooch in dark violet waterglass. The headphones are blue waterglass, and her hair is a streaked baroque white (you can kiiinda see the streak texture in the close-up, but it looks better irl). Details painted on with fuse-on paint. 

My SO told me she was too tall, but her legs are obscured by the dress to look like she’s floating (also, the camera angle exacerbates it a bit). The original art only extends to about just below the waist, so for the bottom half I had to improvise - and I didn’t think I did such a bad job until my BF was like “is she on stilts...??” 

Hair always makes my life complicated - long curvy nonsense that has to line up with the streaks in the glass... But then again that’s my fault for choosing this instead of traditional stained glass designs such as ducks and butterflies.

Nimonaaaaa ~~~~

I love Nimona, I even cosplayed her at ECCC this year. 

These photos are not very good, it’s hard to capture all the glass colors at the same time with the weird morning light. The pajamas are antique mauve, the shark is a rough textured gray and charcoal, and the hair is a dark violet waterglass. The details were painted on with fuse-on Vitrea 160 paint. 37 pieces, about 9 inches tall.