Monday, November 23, 2009

Stuff on my workbenches

And yes, it is just "stuff"! Today you get to see a bit of how messy my workbenches are. This is pretty much the normal state of things, unfortunately. About once a month I clear everything off and start again, especially on the painting desk (the sculpting one tends to accumulate more papers, and I only have to worry about dust on the sculpting one, not overspray from the airbrush).

This is my sculpting desk. It's also where my computer normally lives, so this is where I do email, find reference photos, update this blog, etc. See that small semi-cleared space in front of the computer? That's where sculptures in progress go while I'm working on them!

This is exactly how the desk looks right now, I didn't clear anything off it for the photo. Supernova is off to the right, having been beheaded last night (his head was too large; I'm going to discuss that in another post). The roll of toilet paper is used for packing models for shipping. You can see my two lamps; the fluorescent one on the left gets moved over to the painting table when I'm painting. The painting table is off to the left, and the curly red hose underneath the desk runs from my compressor in the closet to the airbrush.


This is my painting bench. I didn't do any painting over the weekend, but I did pull some horses down to check them over. That's why there are three horses on the bench--normally only the one that I am working on is there and the rest are up high on shelves. I'll also have to clean this bench up before I get back to painting today, as it's simply too crowded with all the paints and stuff. The two horses that are actually on the desk are Haidar (who I repainted a large portion of and is almost ready to go) and a commissioned Zim (also almost done!).

You can also see my extra monitor, which I use for reference photos while I'm painting, and my two lights (the third is on my sculpting desk right now). The shelf thing on the right rear usually holds paints but is currently mostly empty because I need to clean stuff up; the bins under the desk also hold paints as well as some sculpting supplies like sandpaper and some other random stuff. The shallow bins on top of the desk (back left) hold powdered pigments.

Oddly (or maybe not) the rest of the house is far neater. I try to keep all my mess in the studio with varying degrees of success!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Supernova...take two


I have been pretty busy lately, between commissions and some sculpting, that I just haven't managed to get photos up here! This week was so rainy that I couldn't really paint--the paint just wouldn't dry and I was getting frustrated, plus with the blowing wind I couldn't spray outside. So, I sculpted! Last week I finished and sent off a bunch of micro minis, this week I started working on a traditional who you've seen before if you read this blog (or maybe at Breyerfest).

Supernova, in his non-hardening clay form, had gotten to the adding details point. He is/was very near the point where I need to make a mold and cast him so that I can continue refining him and finish him up. However, when I moved I had to throw out my resin because the bucket broke and one part spilled, so making a mold would require ordering more resin (and probably more rubber as well). Then once the mold is made, it's a tedious process cleaning up the resin casting just to get it back to where I was before making the mold. This is why I pay someone else to do my molds and castings for the production runs--I am perfectly capable of making a mold that will work, but without equipment like a spin-caster it's difficult to get good castings.

Since I was reluctant to make a mold, I decided to do the next best thing. I resculpted Supernova from scratch in Apoxie Sculpt.

This hasn't been as difficult as you might think--since I already have the plasticine version here, I can take measurements off of that and use it as a model. This helps to eliminate some of the major problems with working directly in epoxy, and I am hoping that I will be able to keep the cutting or grinding off and resculpting of major body parts to a minimum. So far I've pretty much just got Apoxie globbed on; there will be much sanding and building back up yet to do. It's still time consuming, but I'm not sure that it's any more time consuming than making a mold and it does cost much less in materials!