Re: Outside Work #8: Renaissance Faire Poster

In my last post, I mentioned that the subject could probably use some edits. I would have uploaded this sooner, but I had difficulties the first time I tried and then I sort of forgot.

I felt that the original was pretty bare and lacked the fantasy element that is present at many Renaissance Faires. Unfortunately, I doubt this was submitted, as I simply turned it in to my teacher. I assumed he would ask if we wanted to submit it, but he never did. I'm not even sure if it would be allowed considering pretty much none of it is my original work. I simply re-colored and cropped things. (The castle in the background is from a Hayao Miyazaki movie called Laputa: Castle in the Sky.) Still yet, overall I'm very proud of this outcome.

Outside Work #8: Renaissance Faire Poster

For our final project in my Digital Media class, we were assigned to design a poster for the Alabama Renaissance Faire. Obviously, it should be in keeping with a Middle-Ages type of design. If I like it well enough, I can submit it to the actual committee for a contest. If it is chosen to be used the prize is $500! Here's hoping. Of course, it could probably use some edits.

Outside Work #7: Pointillism

For the third project in my 2D design class, we were supposed to pick a theme and create 6 images with pointillism that were supposed to emphasize texture. I chose the theme of wings.

This took forever and I didn't actually do it correctly, however. The only one that actually looks textured is the hummingbird wing on the bottom right, and that was the last one I did in a very rushed way. The others are too flat and don't look realistic.

Outside Work #6: Shape Study

The second assignment in my 2D design class was to focus on shapes and create two designs out of cut black paper. One of the designs was to be based on positive space, and the other based on negative space.

For my first one, I used my trip to China as inspiration. Specifically the weekend when we went to Taishan, or Mount Tai. It's one of China's tallest mountains and also one of the five spiritual mountains of Buddhism. I represented the mountain and it's shadow, as well as the 12 dragon pillars at the base and the temple at the peak.

The second design focuses on my education and how it began in one place and was centralized in one community as my knowledge grew through the grades, until graduation and beginning college where the path of education becomes specific and branches off in multiple directions.

Outside Work #5: Line Study

In my 2D design class, the first project was to make four 5in x 5in squares with different designs comprised of types of lines. The squares were supposed to be one with straight lines, one with diagonal lines, one with curved lines, and the last as a combination of all three. It took an incredibly long time, because the we were supposed to make 20 preliminary designs for each type of line. I didn't manage to get all of those done, but these final designs worked out quite well. My favorite is definitely the all curved lines one.

Outside Work #4: Mixed Self-Portrait

Our fourth assignment was to combine at least 3 photos of ourselves into one image. I had quite a bit of trouble coming up with something good enough, as I'm certainly not the kind of guy deserving of being used in artwork. Plus, doing so made me feel incredibly vain...

Still yet, I used these four pictures from my trip to China and managed to come up with this.

It's nowhere near as convincing as the last one. The proportions, perspective, and lighting are actually way off, but it's good enough.

Outside Work #3: PhotoShop Scene

With our third project in the Digital Media class, we were supposed to create a scene by putting together multiple different images. The idea was to have one object in scale with the scene, one significantly out of scale, and one hidden in plain sight.

I began with the above image. I added the boat and it's shadow, the lamp and it's reflection, a small silhouette of the Statue of Liberty on the horizon, a sea monster to the right of the boat, and I even flipped the sky to lower the sun's position. I tried to change the lighting on objects so that it looks as though the light is actually coming from the lamp. I think I did a pretty good job.

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Outside Work #2: Wander

Yet another project from my Digital Media class, the assignment for this was very similar to the first one. We were to again draw a scene of some kind, scan it, and add color in PhotoShop. However, this time all the color had to be a high resolution texture, and at least two of the textures must be scanned personally instead of simply downloaded.

I decided to draw a picture of the main character from my favorite video game of all time. Wander from Shadow of the Colossus.

Again, after extensive editing and scanning in some moss and the foil inside of a Rice Krispie Treat wrapper, I managed to come up with this.

The grassy hill is made with the scan of the moss, his sword is the foil, and everything else was downloaded from the internet and colored with overlay effects. The sky was made by simply inverting the colors of a picture of bunched up red silk which turned out to be the perfect sky colors. Again, I'm really proud of this one. It's not a precise representation of the character, but it's definitely recognizable.

Outside Work #1: Lighthouse at Night

Other than the projects for my 3D design class, I've had a number of other projects occupying my time. Most of these will be from my Digital Media class where we are learning how to use the program PhotoShop, but others will be from my 2D design class.

In this project, the assignment was to draw line art of a scene, scan it, and then color in with PhotoShop. This is the scene that I drew up in regular pencil.

After quite a bit of work, I managed to color it like this. I'm relatively proud of the outcome.

Objectification

Our final project was to create a performance art piece based on an object and how we could react or respond to it. It was to be either performed live in front of the class or in the form of a 5-8 minute long video. As you can imagine, all three groups chose to do a video to avoid the pressure of a live performance.

My group - Joyce Eccleston, Briana Knight, and I - had significant trouble coming up with a concept for our video. Eventually we decided to focus on the elements of romantic relationships and use flowers to represent the human nature present in them, as flowers are generally seen as symbols for love and affection, but also symbolize nature.

We took two separate evenings to film in a picturesque setting with a creek and field of flowers with the sun beginning to set behind the trees. This gave the video the look of a typical movie date where everything is perfect, which is essentially the effect we were going for. We did have some mishaps with battery power, so some parts are noticeably lower quality, as well as a problem with balancing in the creek, but that added an element of playfulness that we decided was a perfect addition to the video, despite getting a little wet.

 

The evolution of a relationship is a beautiful, intimate thing. The process of two entirely separate entities, existing in their own world and feeling isolated things, combining to become one functional body is extraordinary. There are layers of chemistry, compatibility, and sheer mystery that go into the process of joining people. Balance plays a key role in maintaining healthy relationships. One must feel as much love and support as they exude. The gender role typically given to depict a healthy relationship is the masculine figure supports while the feminine figure nurtures; however, the worth of a relationship cannot be gauged by something as simple as a social norm. A natural balance of the give and take of these characteristics can help people build a solid foundation. This piece is about the physical simplicity and pure, hidden bond and balance that pulls two beings together.

De-emphasizing the Corner

Our sixth project was called De-emphasizing the Corner, and it required us to build a diagonal half cube and adorn the two sides that would show and the right triangle top with a layered design intended to draw attention from the corner created by all 3 sides meeting.

Yet again, I struggled to find or create a good design in my mind and was grasping at straws for designs. I wish I hadn't used the Companion Cube earlier in the course, because it would have been perfect for this. I had eventually settled for a strange box from the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but it proved to be too problematic getting a good screenshot from which to work.

I then for some reason thought of clockwork. All the interlocking gears working together flawlessly even on multiple layers. It was perfect, and I was determined to make it so that the gears would move with each other, So I set out finding some pictures to use on the internet, and I found a picture with a few good gears. However, I edited them and created some more variety as well, by twisting the arms of some of them. I set them up in PhotoShop on two separate layers so that I could print the gray separately from the black. I tried to set them up as mechanically sound as I could manage and also made a triangular top in this same fashion. From just looking at the gears, I could tell that they would all move if I turned just one crank that would be on the small black gear in the bottom right of the image. That gear and the grey one behind it would be the only gears connected to each other by glue.

Once I had it all mapped and printed out, I began tracing the gears onto a sheet of foam board that was left over from the "Window to the Soul" project. I also built the main half cube in the same way as I did in that project.

With all of the gears traced, I began carefully cutting them out. To be honest, it wasn't all that difficult. I simply stabbed downward into the lines and let the angle of the blade do the cutting for me. The only problem I had with it was that it took a very long time as I had to cut out 34 gears in total of varying sizes and shapes. The worst part was that I had to sit in the floor for the whole time because the foam board was too large to fit on my desk (even if it was cleaned off.), so I had to get up and stretch ever once in a while. My legs were killing me afterward... from sitting!

 I finally got all of one side cut out and began putting them together to test out how well they worked. They looked fantastic, but some of the small gears wouldn't cooperate with the large ones, and kept getting snagged on each other, so unfortunately I had to scrap the idea of making them all move and settle for the knowledge that it would have worked if it weren't for those meddling small gears. However, I suspected that there was a possibility of such a thing happening, so I carried on with the design, because I still think it looked cool. I finished cutting out the rest of the gears and retired for the night.

The next morning I began setting them up on the base with straight pins as their axles to keep them in place. I messed around with them still trying to make them work at this point, but there was nothing short of making new gears that could be done. 

I simply glued them in place as it shows them in the PhotoShop mockup and made adjustments so that they would grip the gears from the other sides better. It took me about 2 days total of working; half a day to design it, a full day of cutting out gears (seriously, it took forever) and actually only about a couple hours to glue the gears down into the final product. I must say, I'm pretty proud of it.

Wunderkammer

Our sixth project is entitled "Wunderkammer" which translates from German to Wonder room, or Curiosity Cabinet. It is meant as a way to display a collection, and in keeping with the trend of past projects I had no idea what to do, because I don't really collect anything. I thought about displaying video games and game related stuff, but that just didn't seem good enough to me. Eventually, I realized that I do actually have a bit of a collection of Coheed and Cambria memorabilia.

Once I knew what I was going to put in it, I had to find something to put it in. I looked all over for a suitable cabinet, going to thrift shops, and furniture stores to no avail. I eventually just went to Hobby Lobby to see if I could find anything there and I found the shadow boxes in the framing area. These are basically frames for three dimensional objects and would work perfectly.

I have every album Coheed and Cambria have released, with their first on both CD and limited edition vinyl repressing, and their second signed by the band. Their fifth album deluxe edition came with a book entitled Year of the Black Rainbow that tells the first chapter of the science fiction story that the lead singer writes, called The Amory Wars. I also have a book that contains all issues of the comic form of the second chapter of The Amory Wars. On top of that, I have the Black Card from pre-ordering the fifth album deluxe edition that allowed me early access to concert venues for a year, and a Fan VIP Pass from the limited edition repressing of their first album.

As much as I already have, this is definitely still a growing collection, because if they release it, I'm going to buy it. There will be comic forms of every chapter of the story, as well as novelizations of them, and they will definitely be on my shelf.

Some might call it an obsession.

Wire Drawing

Our fifth project was to create a drawing out of mostly wire. Other objects could be used, but the focus was supposed to be on wire. We went to a scrap yard to find old wire and other objects to use, but at that time I had no idea what I was going to do. This was actually one of the most difficult projects for me to design. I was completely at a loss up until two days from it being due! Then I decided to look through my old sketches to get inspiration. When I saw this design, it kind of clicked what to do.

I made some changes to the design, such as making the spheres be crumpled balls of copper wire, and the octagon would have grey-ish silver wire wrapped all the way around it through the hole in the center.

I had to figure out a way to make the frame of the octagon sturdy enough to support the weight of the wire and toyed with a number of ideas before deciding that I would just have to cut two planes out of plywood and separate them with dowel rods. I looked up a geometric way to draw out perfect octagons and drew two concentric ones on a sheet of plywood. To make cutting them out faster, I clamped another sheet to this one and made both cuts at the same time.

I was left with this after a couple hours of my first time using both a circular saw and jigsaw. It was a pretty unpleasant experience because saw dust kept getting behind my safety glasses. Some safety glass, right? Fortunately, though, I managed to cut them out quite well if I may say so. I then drilled holes for the dowel rod spacers that I was going to put in.

With the spacers in place the whole thing was beginning to come together. It stood up just as I wanted it to, so now all that was left was to wrap it in wire...

I vastly underestimated the amount of time and effort it would be to wrap that much wire around this type of structure. I had bought a quarter-mile of electric fence wire and fully planned to use it all, but my arms gave out about half way through the roll. It took me at the very least 4-5 hours to go from bare wood to the picture on the bottom right.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the wire isn't wrapped densely enough to completely cover the wood like I had hoped, but as I said, my arms were done. I then began working with the copper wire to make the crumpled balls of wire. I had a few different shades of the copper and made the string through the opening sort of gradate from very shiny bright copper on the ends to a dull, corroded kind in the center.

I made yet another mistake with my design planning at this point, as the wire spheres were also nowhere near as dense as I wanted them to be. Also, whereas in the design they were meant to arch through the center of the octagon, in the final product they merely laid through it with out support. However, it was already approaching 5 am and I had to make do. I ended up skipping my first class to sleep.

Here's a picture of the final product. I am definitely displeased with it, but that's what I get for inadvertently waiting so long to get started.

Re: Shape and Form

In regards to this, my submission for our second project titled "Shape and Form," given my explanation that I'm an atheist in my most recent project post, I'd like to share my meaning that I came up with a few days after the day we showed it.

In my opinion, it resembles a head with horns which is how a lot of people see atheists: evil godless heathens. I have a friend that, I believe, can attest to being called such, but even if he hasn't one can easily find accounts on the internet. However, the ring looks like a halo (slightly ironic) above the head to show that despite living without god, most atheists are good people, even great people. Bill Gates, for example, has donated ~$28 billion to charities as of 2007. That was five years ago, and I'm sure he hasn't stopped. The light could also represent the same thing. Light emanating from the inside of it bringing warmth and joy. The cube on the inside of the head represents knowledge, and is red because red is the color of passion, and knowledge is a passion for most atheists.

This was thought up entirely after this project was completed, but maybe it was subconscious all along. I just thought that since I shared the meanings behind my cube, I should elaborate on this one as well.

"Window to the Soul"

Our fourth project was meant to be an expression of ourselves similar to the glasses that we had made previously, but more in depth. The assignment was to find (or in my case, create) a container and decorate and fill it with things that describe you as a person. It could be an overall synopsis of your being, or it could focus on a specific "turning point" in your life.

As usual, I was pretty much at a loss at the beginning of the project because I'm wholly convinced that I haven't really done anything special in life, save for graduating as the Valedictorian of my class, and studying abroad in China for a month. Other than those, I'm a typical (or perhaps even atypically boring) person. I like technology and music, but who doesn't? I tend to keep to myself and enjoy video games. With all my utterly unique (that's sarcasm, by the way) attributes simply piling up in front of me, I went with them.

My first problem was getting an appropriate container and I really, once again, had no idea where to start. I thought about significant boxes and whatnot in some of my favorite games until I discovered the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube® from Portal! Portal is a puzzle/platforming game where you have to use two inter-dimensional portals that you fire from a special gun onto a surface to move these cubes onto Aperture Science Super-Colliding Super Buttons® to open doors so that you may move on to the next test chamber all under the watchful eyes of the sentient computer system, GLaDOS.

As you can see, it's a bit on the complicated side, so I got some help from the good old internet. (Portal fans almost have a cult status, so it's quite easy to find a how-to in building one of these.) I found a blog where someone had dressed up as the main character from the game for Halloween and made a cube to carry around as part of her costume, and she explained exactly how she made it. More importantly, she provided a template for the crazy corner pieces. I was able to print them out on cardstock and fold them into the right shape. However, I needed a base cube shape to which to attach them. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a large (actually twice as large as needed) sheet of foam board and measured out squares to make a perfect 1 foot cube. My dad helped me measure to account for the thickness of the board. Once I had all the pieces cut out and marked, I joined them with half toothpicks as nails and jaggedly cut one of the corners out.

I had originally planned to leave the corner out and open, but my dad suggested that I put it together as well and use it as a sort of lid. It worked out much better than I thought it would, because the jagged way I cut it out in the first place really made it so it had a good grip. I also decided to forgo the small parts on the edge of the cube between the corner pieces, but if I ever make another one, they will be included.

I finished putting the cube together except for the top, so I could have access to the interior to decorate it. Then I fastened the corner pieces to the removable corner and the bottom four corners while I thought of things to put inside. I knew I wanted to include my trip to China and also pay homage to some of my other favorite games, but I needed to describe the more personal side of me as well.

I actually did include a number of personal things, but despite the outpouring of personal information from others in the class, I was still too chicken to point them out. However, I will do so in this post, because I think I should try to be more open.

I needed to add color to the inside of the cube, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of mixing different paint colors, painting carefully, and waiting for it to dry, so I enlarged some images on my computer and printed them out to work as wallpaper basically. The interior walls are simply a wall texture from Portal 2 and it was mainly just to break the monotony of pure white. The ceiling is a picture of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, because I am fascinated by space and what's out there. The floor is sort of one of the personal things, but it was included in jest of myself. There is a meme on the internet known as Socially Awkward Penguin that makes fun of the odd and embarrassing things that people with poor social skills do, and will sometimes focus on how said person acts around girls. I'll admit, I have a crush on a particular girl, but I have trouble bringing myself to talk to her. Therefore, I could be called socially awkward, but as I said, it's something I just make fun of myself for. I was going to find a small penguin figure to put in the center, actually, but that would have just been weird, so I just used the colored background. Also, I have no idea what a penguin has to do with social awkwardness.

As you can see, these pictures were taken once it was all complete (It was incredibly difficult to position my hand to take pictures inside.) I think the best way to explain the significance of everything is once you can see it. Please forgive me if the explanations seem sporadic because the creation was just as sporadic. In fact, the aged photos and the hand print were spur of the moment "that sounds cool" ideas. I included the VIP pass for a Coheed and Cambria concert in the back corner because, as I've said a number of times, they are definitely my favorite band. The Chinese characters in the middle two pictures are the two main cities we stayed in while in China: Tianjin and Beijing respectively, but we definitely spent most of our time in Tianjin. The gears on the chain are called "COG Tags" and they are from the hyper-violent shooter game Gears of War, one of my favorites. The aged photos, as I said, were a last minute addition. I scoured my computer and Facebook for fond memories that I had. The first picture is of my first Coheed and Cambria concert, the second is of my friends, Kyle and Jared, and I sitting at another friends house getting ready to play video games all together, and the last picture is of my parents and I with our snowman that we built on the first white Christmas in my life. I aged them in Photoshop because whenever I think of old sepia toned photographs, it makes me think that they must be of fond memories to have been kept so long. The hand print is meant to be my artistic side, because it has a pencil, pencil sharpener, and calligraphy brush - that I was given by a student in China when she was teaching us calligraphy - all in its palm. The roll of paper was given to my graduating class at the "Senior Pep Rally" and it represents my education; one of the few things that I'm actually proud of.

I'm sure you've noticed the strange markings in the last picture by now and have been wondering what they signify. Well, this is where we get into the things I was afraid to mention...  It's a language from a game series called Jak and Daxter just because I like the series. That has nothing to do with the actual words. Each of the little markings corresponds to an English letter and can easily be translated. It's no Klingon from Star Trek or Elvish from Lord of the Rings; it's basically just English in disguise. The word to the left of the VIP pass simply says "Valedictorian," but it is placed high up on the wall because it is something I'm proud of. I used this word to set the precedent of up high being a good thing, and down low being a bad thing.

I cut off the word just above the diploma because this was sent to a friend that knew the origins of the symbols and could figure it out if he wanted. It is lower on the wall so it's something that I'm ashamed of, and I didn't want to say anything about it, but, as I said, I figure I should start being more open. That word says "depression." Now, I haven't actually went to a psychiatrist or anything, it's just a self-diagnosis, but I know for a fact that when you wake up and wish you hadn't that something has to be wrong. (These are very few and far between.) Although, it's not permanent, as of now, I'm quite happy and have been for some time. Maybe I'm just overreacting to not being a morning person or I'm mistaking normal life woes as depression. I don't know; however, if you read this, please don't worry about me. I'm not that bad. It's just something that I've had to deal with.

Now, as emotionally draining as that was, I'm actually more nervous about the word to the right of the VIP Pass, and rightfully so. No one that I know of has ever been threatened for being depressed, but that's kinda part of this one. Whether it's an actual death threat or just the threat of burning in eternal hellfire, someone is going to threaten me eventually and technically already have by default. That's because that word is "Atheist." However, notice that it is high up on the wall. I'm proud to say that I don't believe in a god, but also terrified because of the effect it can have on a person's life. Some people may not hire me in the future. Some of my friends or family may disown me. I may lose relationships. (If I can ever get out of being a penguin, that is.) As stated above, my life may be threatened, and that's kind of a big deal to an atheist; this is the only one we have! There's no, "Oh well, at least I'll get to see grandpa again," or "There's always next time." People have become more tolerant in recent years, and that's definitely a plus, but this is still a majority Christian country, and generally, they don't take too kindly to the ideas of atheists. I understand there are many religious people that are tolerant, but until everyone is cool with everyone else doing their own thing, we will all, not just us atheists, be under threat from someone. That is one of the reasons I am an atheist. This one I am actually okay with people asking about, though. As long as it's in a civilized manner.

That just about covers the references on the inside, and the outside is pretty mild in comparison. Once I got everything on the inside, I put the top on and the remaining 3 corner pieces. I painted the whole thing with gray primer, then mixed a lighter gray for the corner pieces. If you refer WAY back up to the picture of the cube from Portal, you'll see that there is a logo repeated on the faces of the cube. That is the logo for the company Aperture Science. I decided that I would use the six sides to display different logos, however. I created 6 circles with different logos in the middle to print off and glue to the outside.

On the top, I left the Aperture Science logo to show that I like science, but also to further connect it to the game, Portal.

The back right is the dragonfly logo of Coheed and Cambria. This one was included simply because they are my favorite band. No real meaning or explanation behind this one. The logo itself refers to heroin, because the lead singer's father was addicted to heroin, but that has nothing to do with me personally.

The back left is from a game called Borderlands where four teammates work together to find The Vault: a doorway to another dimension that contains a giant demon monster. That symbol marks The Vault, so it seemed appropriate to mark my box of personal demons with it.

The front right is known as the Keywork. It's one of the logos of Coheed and Cambria. It represents a large solar system comprised of 7 stars - 3 large and 4 small - and 78 planets aligned into a triangle and connected by a beam of energy. Did I mention that the lead singer writes a sci-fi comic book and bases all of the lyrics on the story? So this one can not only be about my favorite band, but also the fact that I'm a mild comic book nerd as well.

The front left is from a video game called Shadow of the Colossus. In this game, you are a young man trying to bring his love back to life, and to do so, he travels to a Forbidden Land where he must slay 16 colossi nothing but a sword, bow and arrow, and his horse. This glyph is the marker for the colossi's weak points. I had to include this, because not only does the glyph look awesome and will likely be my first tattoo, (Appropriate with my size, no?) but the game is literally my favorite game of all time.

Lastly, the bottom relates to my social awkwardness again. The Weighted Storage Cube isn't the only cube in Portal. There is another one that called the Companion Cube that has the Aperture logo replaced with a pink heart. It was meant to keep the test subjects company in the test chambers until they got attached to the cube at which point they were forced to throw the Companion Cube into an incinerator! It's a very silly part of the story of the game. However, I used mine to show that I do want to have a girlfriend that I can spend time with and enjoy the company of, even if I can't really outwardly show it. Hence it being on the bottom hiding directly under the social awkwardness.

I made a few mistakes with the brush when painting the corners, and there was really no way to go back and fix them. I also meant for the dark gray of the logos to match the overall cube and the light gray to match the corners, but that was also a little too difficult to go back and try to fix. Over all, I'm very proud of this and it was a very cathartic experience in simply including my somewhat secretive things. I do regret not actually speaking up and  more thoroughly explaining my choices of color and symbolism, but I guess I was just afraid of the reaction I might get...

Volumetrics

Our third project was called volumetrics and involved finding a generally very small object and scaling it up drastically into unreal proportions.  I had quite a bit of trouble deciding on my subject, first choosing a boring, incredibly simple pencil sharpener, but, recognizing the simplicity of it, I knew that wouldn't do. The only other thing I could think of was a dragonfly, so I went with it!

I never actually did any sketches because since I wasn't actually designing the creature, just merely scaling its size, I thought it better to just look at some up close pictures.

I enlarged and printed the picture of the wing detail to provide a real time reference when creating the wings. I mainly used the head picture to get an idea of how to attach the eyes and it made me adamant about getting the hexagonal compound eyes appearance in my recreation.

I started off with probably the most complex part: the wings. How was I supposed to create a membrane between the veins? More importantly, how was I supposed to create the veins in the first place?! I eventually thought about a plastic used to seal off drafty windows during the winter to create the membrane, and that lead to bending the outer, over-all shape of the each wing out of clothes hangers, because the plastic needs a place to attach in all directions and the wings needed to be stiff anyway. The yellow tape was removed and the wire bent around itself like the other three, and they were all painted black to be more true to the real wings.

With that, I decided I would use the wing detail picture as not only a reference for the outlines, but also the veins. Once I had stretched the plastic on the outlines, I traced the lines onto each one individually with a Sharpie marker. It really wasn't as difficult as I made it out to be. By the way, when sitting like this, the wings have a 30 inch wingspan, just to give you an idea of the scale.

I then needed to figure out a way to create the body of the dragonfly. I didn't want it to be too heavy so clay was not an option, and I needed it to be decently sturdy for transportation's sake. I got an idea, from a friend of mine, to use something called plaster cloth. Which is essentially paper maché on steroids, so of course I would need a structure to which to apply it. I bought two half spheres, a large cone, and a few cylindrical pieces of floral foam, as well as a large sphere and two egg shaped pieces of typical styrofoam. I spent the next couple evenings carving and molding the pieces into the right shapes and eventually got what you see to the right.

The head, main body (the white part), and the beginning of the tail (part right behind the white part) are all connected with the dowel rod sticking out of the front there, and the rest of the tail is all connected by two parallel clothes hanger wires that have been bent downward slightly to give the tail a curve. The aforementioned beginning of the tail was made out of the bottom part of the large cone, the head out of the two half spheres (pointlessly bought separately because they were put together into a sphere.), the main body out of the large sphere which I had to carve down to match the angle of the cone, the tail out of the cylindrical floral foam,

and the little pincers out of the bifurcated tip of the cone.

I had not yet made the eyes at this point.

Once the foam was secured together, my mother and I layered the plaster cloth over the structure generously to come out with this. I was very pleased with how smooth it appeared and how easily the cloth worked. I did start to notice some proportional disparities, however; as a dragonfly with that size body would have a much smaller head. Relatively speaking, of course.

I had to allow the plaster a little time to dry, but soon after I spray painted the entire thing black as a base color. Little did I know that plaster doesn't like spray paint, and was rejecting just as much as it was allowing to stick. I ended up having to touch it all up with acrylic paint and a brush. Once that dried, I painted yellow markings on it. They ended up being too bright for my taste, looking far too much like a deformed hornet than a dragonfly, so I lightly misted over the yellow with some black spray paint for the

final effect on it.

As for the eyes, they were definitely tricky. In order to get the hexagonal effect, I cut up a shower pouf (yep, that's what they're called) and stretched a piece over each eye. I then used some rave hair color for which I had to uncomfortably go to a beauty shop. I used a combination of two colors: a super bright neon green as the base coat to give the brightness, and a misting of a shiny, somewhat metallic turquoise as the second coat. I was trying my best to mimic the iridescence of real dragonfly eyes. I didn't get it exactly right, but I think they came out looking pretty good. I let it dry just a bit, then peeled the pouf off, leaving black lines where they had covered.

I had to touch up some areas around the eyes where some of the hair color had gotten past my newspaper, then attach the wings to the back. Unfortunately, my method of attachment was pretty crude. I simply took large metal staples (usually used to hold down wiring in houses) and stabbed two into each pair of wings, straddling where they meet in the center, then glazed the area over with a transparent adhesive. I would have preferred a more elegant solution, but it worked out pretty well. Here is a picture of the final product with a small size comparison. I must say, I'm pretty proud of the wings and the eyes particularly.