When I have a terrible need of--shall I say the word--religion, then I go out and paint the stars.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

The changes may not be all that apparent in this photo, but this is 6 more hours of work from yesterday's photo. I spent most of the day on the jaw, around the nose and at the zygomatic arch. The instructional DVD (which I've completely abandoned now) had the viewer take measurements of their own skull at different key points. I had wondered how accurate those would be given the thickness of skin and muscle, but trusted the guy on the video. But today as I worked from the models it became apparent that my sculpture was larger than life-size. Not by much (maybe 1/2", give or take), but enough to cause some difficulty when working from the life-sized models. So I did a lot of scraping down to get it a little more in sync. It's still larger than the models, but not by much. I also raised the ear hole about half an inch and took off about an inch from below the occipital bone, behind the mastoid process (which you can't see in this photo), which may mean I have to rework the cervical vertebrae. We'll see.

Today I chucked the instructional DVD I've been working with and instead just referred to the skull models I have. The DVD has it's merits (led by a guy who does a lot of CGI) in that it was good for the first part of the sculpt, figuring out the general planes and proportions. But now that I'm getting down to the nitty gritty it's much better to be working with an actual model. I mostly reworked and refined the cranium today refining the generalized CGI-like planes for a more precise realism. I also retooled all of the facial features. It's a bit of a challenge as I have two skull models that are quite different (one male, one female, and I think some ethnic differences as well), plus I'm working off of my own skull's dimensions. So this is more "best guess" than an exact replica of either of the models I have.

A side view -- wish I'd taken some profile pics with the previous incarnations. Haven't touched the cervical vertebrae in a few days, so it's still in "blocked in" phase here:

‎"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."

-Carl Jung

Getting into the smaller details now. Spent most of the day refining planes, both large and small. Some adjusting of the eye and nose holes. Lots of work around the mouth and jaw, and also starting to delineate the cervical vertebrae. Next session I'll focus on the teeth, which I anticipate will be highly tedious. But it must be done, and I want to do it. It's just going to involve lots of tiny work, with my tiniest tools. And I think I'm still off with much of the jaw and teeth-planes, so I'm sure there will be more adjusting of the form.

Lovely Seattle morning (if, like me, you love this kind of weather). Gray and a bit blustery. All day I could hear the clanging of cables against the sailboat masts as the wind had it's way with them. The afternoon cleared to some sun and a beautiful fall day.

The subtler tweaking phase begins as I start to delineate the smaller planes and features. But I'm really enjoying this whole project. A lot.

Further along although still dealing with primitive planes of the head. I think the ghost of my half-size skeleton is haunting me on this one (hint: I've named him Massive Jaw Jim). That big jaw will be much-reduced in the coming week. I'm also struggling mightily with the eye sockets, but this is good for me. It's exactly what I need to be learning -- the underlying structure of the eyes. A lot of tweaking and reworking in the immediate future on this one --

Day two of the skull sculpt (what the armature was for). I'm using my own skull measurements for it. Let's just hope I have a normal skull..

beautiful black

Wow -- look at that beautiful black ink! I took this photo after it had set for a short while. I can't wait to try it out. I forgot to mention -- I used 5 oz. of iron sulfate to mix with the gall water. But with so many different and wildly varying recipes, it's all just guessing and averaging between them.

Iron gall ink, part 2

I finally braved the goo! I'm sparing you the gory pictures, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I strained the ground gall into a bowl (see picture below, and yes that's exactly what it looks like -- thankfully it doesn't smell like that). Then I mixed the ground galls with another cup of water, swished it around and strained it again. Finally, I took out handfuls of the mush and squeezed them hard in my hand to get the last of the liquid out. After it was all said and done I had about 5 or 6 cups of gall liquid.

I picked up some iron sulfate from Seattle Pottery, which is the yellow powder in the white bowl below. The matter of obtaining iron sulfate hasn't been an exact science. If you do a Google image search for "iron sulfate" you'll see a lot of pictures of green powder, some pictures of a white powder, and a few pictures of a yellow powder.  Which is the one I need?  I'm going with the yellow stuff from the pottery supply place.  We'll see how it turns out.  So far, so good --

My apologies for the fuzzy picture below. Had I known the liquid would change so quickly and dramatically after adding the iron sulfate I would have tried harder to take some good before pictures. But below is the best one I have. Prior to adding the iron sulfate, the gall liquid was a reddish-brown color and very watery and transparent --

After adding the iron sulfate it changed quickly right before my eyes, becoming a very dark black color and thickening somewhat. At first it was brown-black but as it sat it became more purple/blue-black. It even stained my fingers black as I worked with it.  Definitely potent stuff, at least in terms of staining. It's a little hard to tell in this photo, but this is what it looked like after adding the iron sulfate --

Now to set it aside to sit for a few more days before the final step...

back to the studio

Gearing up for the next step of the iron gall ink. I picked up some iron sulfate and now have to psych myself up to strain out that moldy mess of gall goo.

In the meantime it's back to the studio. Spent a good day cleaning and organizing it. Now it's on to new projects. The first is pictured below. Any ideas what this is? It'll become apparent soon enough. Spent the past two days building this thing. It was truly a headache, what with my lack of proper tools and all the time spent dealing with clueless people who work at hardware stores and yet know nothing about tools or construction. grrrr... But I finally got this thing built. I even managed to bend that 5/8" thick threaded rod with the help of some length of pipe.

"Delight is a secret. And the secret is this: to grow quiet and listen; to stop thinking, stop moving, almost to stop breathing; to create an inner stillness in which, like mice in a deserted house, capacities and awarenesses too wayward and too fugitive for everyday use may delicately emerge. Oh, welcome them home! For these are the long-lost children of the human mind. Give them close and loving attention, for they are weakened by centuries of neglect. In return they will open your eyes to a new world within the known world, they will take your hand, as children do, and bring you to where life is always nascent, day is always dawning. Suddenly and miraculously, as you walk home in the dark, you are aware of the insubstantial shimmering essence that lies within appearances; the air is filled with expectancy, alive with meaning; the stranger, gliding by in the lamp-lit street, carries silently past you in the night the whole mystery of his life...

Delight springs from this awareness of the translucent quality in all things, whereby beauty as well as ugliness, joy as well as pain, men as well as women, life as well as death -- the grinding clash of opposites between whose iron teeth all systems of philosophy are crushed at last to pulp -- are seen as symbols; in the true meaning of a symbol, whose Janus-like face contains at once that which exists in time and space, and that which transcends it."

--Alan McGlashan, "The Savage and Beautiful Country", 1967

Aren't you glad you're not married to me? (iron gall ink, continued)

(or three or four...)