Fascinating example of the importance of sand blasting a piece before patinaing it.


I gave the back legs of this sandblasted guy a soak in vinegar and water to remove some investment material, and accidentally created a patina example. Check out the different patches the legs. The vinegar darkened his legs, forming a patina. The spots where I held him without gloves didn’t darken as much, due to the patina being impeded by skin oils. The spots, like the claws, where I’d just taken a grinder to, patinaed as well, but went golden. Fascinating! This is why it’s best to sandblast a piece right before patinaing it, to give yourself a clean spotless surface!
Sandblasting is also useful for spotting surface flaws, which is why I sandblasted this guy even though I wasn’t ready to patina him.

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I’m cleaning up my piece from the last casting. Exciting to see it come together.


Most of the tiny ladders failed to cast. I’ll get a chance to cast some more soon, so it’s no big deal. They were a tricky propositions

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About 10 hours into the clean up of my freshly poured bronzes, and things are looking sculpturey!


The big guy has a lot of welding to do.

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Busy week

I’ve got a pretty busy week going on here. Opening tomorrow, Thursday the 3rd, I’m going to have a little minishow to celebrate my signing up with Gallery IMA. This little preview show is going to be in their lower gallery, and will feature a few of my ceramics and one bronze. I’ll be around during the gallery opening from 6pm to 8pm. It’s an excellent gallery. You should come on by and check it out! They’re at 123 South Jackson Street.

The other big thing is this Saturday from 6pm to 9pm is the biannual Open House at the Pratt Fine Art Center. The open house features refreshment, good times, live glass blowing and art demos, and most importantly for me, a bronze pour. As folks who’ve been following my work recently might know,  I’ve been working on a complicated antelope style beast along with a pair of antlers for my large woodfired beast. Both of those will be cast in bronze this Saturday. There’s quite a few sculptures ready to be poured, so we’ll be doing two melts (two rounds of melting and pouring the bronze). The timing will depend on the metal itself, but we’re aiming to pour the first crucible of bronze at 6ish, and the second at 7ish. The pours themselves don’t take that long, so give yourself time to spare to park and navigate. About 20 minutes after the second pour, we’ll start breaking out the pieces, so you’ll be able to see everyone’s work, then and there!
Pratt is located at 1902 South Main Street, Seattle. The foundry is in the building next to the park, along with glass blowing, forging, and stone carving. Hope to see you there!

 

 

While working on sculpting claws for my big guy, I gave him some paint tape booties. The result is adorable!

via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/mwMcuM