Lance Heads

…because I can get sucked further into the fandom.

Just to keep my hand in sculpture, carving and painting ’cause I haven’t done any of that in a while, I made up three lance heads in the style of my character, Xaldin.

I made three blanks in polymer clay (using a stencil), colored two with 1:1 white:silver paint and then did light to dark gradients in blue and purple, one each. I then did the third in 1:1 black:silver with a darker purple gradient over it,  which I liked a lot more than the white/purple one. I made all of them with a necklace attachment, since they’re only about two inches long and perfectly suited for a geek!necklace.

These are the white/blue and the black/purple ones.

There is no picture of the white/purple one because I decided it was lame and covered it in painted blood (after taking pictures) to make it look like it was straight from a fight but then I LOST the originals and with the blood on it, I’d warning it (on dA) M[strict: violence and gore]. So not posting it here.

Organization XIII Cloak Hardware

Oh dear, it’s been about a month and I did this /weeks/ ago…

Out of self defense, I dove into the Kingdom Hearts fandom just so I could understand what my lunch-table-mates were talking about. Most of the time, it’s better /not/ knowing what they’re talking about, but when they started referring to me as Xaldin, it was Good To Know who that was. He was picked for me because of my hair.

I was amused, borrowed Ani’s cloak (sans hardware) for some basic cosplay shenanigans about the house. Obviously, I had to fix the lack of hardware…

A list of the strange antics I went through for this:

• THREE DIMENSIONAL MODEL TIEMZ
• print (in noxious yellow plastic)
• paint, paint, paint
• wire, string, ribbon, chain, annoying necklace clasps
• actually attach it to the cloak.

Printing Brass and Painting Plastics

Dad printed me another huge cube as a test run for his new set of calibrations. It printed perfectly, except for what we think is a thermal shock through the middle of it.

The shock can be seen in the right middle flange as a small crack.

Dad printed a bunch of knots to test the overhang capabilities. They’re about the size of the end of my thumb. I decided to clean one up and turn it into a necklace or something.

The back one really is smaller! These have been cleaned up a little with a knife.

ABS plastic (what we print in) dissolves in acetone or methyl ethyl ketone (MEK).  This is after dipping it in MEK for slightly longer than not at all (too long!), panicking, dipping it in ‘Barbie Goo’ (the ABS/MEK solution used to prep print beds), attempting to blow out the film that filled up all the gaps (and generally failing), and then dipping it in clear MEK.

Holding it is tricky- if you have any contact with it, that spot with look different than the rest because it didn’t come in contact with the MEK. So I hung it by a hair. The dip into the Barbie Goo bonded the strands of hair together with plastic. You can see it in the picture because the ‘threads’ are pink, instead of more or less invisible.

The difference is alarming. The one on the left has been cleaned up with a knife, the one on the right has been abused with MEK.

I tried painting it to look like wire. It didn’t work as well as I hoped- it looks like metallic paint on plastic. The paint did not stick or cover well because the plastic is so smooth. I will sand the next one (after making it Perfectly Smooth with the MEK.)

Wanderlust

I listened through Aether Shanties and got hit with an inspiration-spaz partway through wanderlust and turned out a painting in the following two days!

Ta-daa!

(click for bigness)

The painting is in watercolor and acrylic (and crayon). The universe bubbles are in acrylic to make them hyper-real, unlike the real world, which is in watercolor. Yes, the foreground is a basketweave. You can figure out the symbolism yourself.

The painting is also only tangentially related to the song, due to a misunderstanding of the lyrics. oops.

Bowls

Another blue bowl, and a purple one. Violated every rule in the book to get these made in one evening for gifting the next day… whatever

Color mixes

• Interior blue is 1:1 blue:silver
• Exterior blue is straight up blue
• Interior purple is 3:1 purple:silver (could cut back on the purple a little but that makes it a little too light for my tastes)
• Exterior purple is just purple
• The edges are black.
• The dragonfly is white.

Painting techniques

• Interior colors are dry brushed to get a burnished look. This involves just barely getting paint on the brush and then brushing it on as fast and thin as possible, creating many layers.
• Exterior colors were just brushed on. Since they can’t be seen, they are darker and less shiny than the interior colors and have a slightly uneven effect.
• Dragonfly- sharpened the end of a skewer to lethal sharpness and dotted the paint on to get the finest line evar.
• The varnish is two layers brushed on. I didn’t try to keep airbubbles out but my varnish is liquid enough to not hold bubbles.

Pictures-
Taken before leaving for school. Sorreh.

Green Thing

It is cute, yes it is.

Green Thing has two lines of dark green dots down the ridges on it’s back. I couldn’t seem to get a good picture of them, though.

A note on painting Green Thing and zip!: I used a very fluffy brush with very little paint and made roughly a thousand layers of paint. It creates a perfectly smooth burnished effect which I will abuse. It worked particularly well on zip! because if it’s metallic coloring.

Shiny Blue Bowl

One standard teacup formed composite bowl done up in pretty paints and sealed for it’s protection, not yours.

The blue on the near side is the closest to the real color. In the sun it is absolutely brilliant. I did not expect the blue/silver mix to work out so well.

This time, the far side is closest to reality. This is the same blue as before not-really-mixed with white and silver in equal parts and brushed on. It’s a variation on a technique used to make real clay look like stone. Sort of.

The yellow and gold clays are a lot brighter in real life. Those are a part of the bowl, rather than an inlay or painted like the rest of the bowl. I originally intended to paint the whole bowl but the effect was too cool to pass up.

I fully expect you to all flip when I say that I’m going to use this to replace the experiment that my previous retainer dish has turned into.