Day 127: Mail Art

Title: Frankenflipper
Assignment: Take an existing postcard and alter it, then send it to a random address (or anonymously to a friend), after documenting.
Materials: Postcard, highlighter pens, white-out, ink pens.

Inspiration: I've had the existing free postcard for awhile since nabbing it from the Mirage in Vegas and always thought it look vaguely disturbing on its own, so I thought I'd make it more so and send it to anonymously to Tony (who is also attempting the 365 project) -  because there is NO WAY ON EARTH he'd ever guess it was from me. ;-)

Day 126: Let's See If It'll FLY

Title: Cowtapult

Assignment: Make something that can fly and test it out.

Materials: Sculpey for Bossie, a mouse trap, paint, cork, nails, spoon, twine, cardboard and duct tape for catapult.

Inspiration: I directed SPAMALOT this summer, and we had a lot of fun with the full-size 'flying cow' gag. I realize this may not QUITE have been what Noah had in mind - but Bossie did indeed fly, and I have the video to prove it!

Doesn't she look happy to volunteer?

 Readyyyyy, aiiiiiim.......

FLY BOSSIE FLY!!

The tragic aftermath of war.

Day 125: Triangulate

Title: RavenLogo

Assignment: Only work with triangle shapes today - or make a giant triangle with a bunch of stuff.

Materials: pencil, ink and PS

Inspiration: Although feathered wings were the first thing that came to mind in terms of triangle shapes, his head turned out to be more interesting to work on, and took on a combination of mechanical and totem elements. I'd say this is a work in progress - I think I'd like to work on the wing lines more, maybe bring some red into them to balance it better.

Day 124: Passing Through

Title: Come to Grandma!!

Assignment: Make something seem like it is passing through a wall or other solid material that it normally wouldn't or couldn't.

Materials: Pencil, sculpey with wire frame for the hand, picture frame and PS

Inspiration: This was the assignment that jammed my gears up nearly a year ago - I'm not sure why, perhaps I just over-thought it or the well had simply run dry. In any case, I just went for it today with a good old-fashioned haunted house trope. 

HAS IT REALLY BEEN NEARLY A YEAR??

Hello, you crazy faithfuls who wander back every now and again, wondering if I've gotten my creative ass back into gear. And hello to the new visitors I see looking in from Germany, Belfast and Coppell, Texas! I have no idea how you found me, but I'm glad you did. If you have a second, feel free to drop a line on the comment box - I'd love to hear from you and hear YOUR ideas for potential subjects. I still have one heck of a lot of monsters to go!

As any of you who are artists know - sometimes you hit a rough patch, when nothing, but NOTHING cries out to be painted, sculpted, written or snapped, or if it does, unfortunately you just don't feel like you are the person to do it justice.

But hopefully the dark clouds are parting and my monster muses are coming back for a visit - I can't promise something every day, but here, at least, is a start.

Title:  PAPA GEDE

Materials: Sculpey, acrylic paint, a rum bottle cap for the hat, various screws and hooks, a strip of purple material for the hat band, hot glue and thread to connect the little bones and the black cock's feather, which was made from a twist-tie. He's about 3 inches high.

Inspiration: I'm going to NEW ORLEANS in November! Our first day there will be the Day of the Dead and we'll be attending a special celebration honoring the dead.

I was urged by my friend who has been there before to bring an offering to PAPA GEDE:

"Call on the Gede when there is a serious, even life-threatening illness that needs healing, or when you have difficult questions that need sound, reliable, and honest answers. Call on GEDE when you need help with grieving, to welcome the dead to the waters of the Abyss, and when you want to enhance sexual potency or heal sexual repression. Call on him to protect young children. Offerings include peppers, pepper sauce, pepper was soaked in rum, cigars, hot creole food, black roosters, black cock feathers, sunglasses with one lens, pieces of marble from a cemetery, crosses, graveyard dust, black and violet candles."

I half jokingly told my friend I could use help with a number of those, so I'd come laden with offerings for the Old Boy!


"The vision of the GEDE appears as some nasty, degraded old drunk at a bar. But Gede is not to be degraded. He is simply above all notions of morality. He laughs at morality. He laughs at her secrets because death renders our secrets laughable. Gede feels us up. All through our lives. He is a hungry and mysterious lover who plays erotically with us throughout life and waits, cockily for each of his lovers to join him. Here he sits in his traditionally outrageous attire, tails, walking stick, and sunglasses, Lord of the Cities of the Dead. His voodoo house brings him a bountiful offering but he remains ravenous. Neither of his appetites can be appeased. He remains isolated for his is the final great mystery from which we all shy away."

And so, here is my offering to Papa G.

I truly am excited about taking part in this ceremony, and look forward to soaking in all the inspiration, color, spice and good times that New Orleans has to offer - along with hunting up some new monsters!

HALLOWEEN BONUS!

Title: Our Cousin From England
Materials: Pumpkin, knife, spoon, candle

Inspiration: As you might figure, I love Halloween. I'll be out of town on the 31st, however, so in the hope I might have a couple Trick or Treaters over the weekend, I thought I'd bend my knife in homage of my favorite vamp, Barnabas Collins, Frid-style.

Day 123: Work on Eggshells

Title: Commander Aeihg

Assignment: Work with or be inspired by an eggshell.

Materials: Two eggs, acrylic paint, blue playdoh, hot glue and a bit of dry scrambled egg for the helmet crest.

Inspiration: I started out trying to do an homage to the Doctor Who Sontarans, 

                   but quickly discovered that though the eggs take paint easily, they shatter even more easily.

Decided the only thing to do was create my own alien commander instead.

Day 122: Create a Musical Instrument

Title: The Devil's Dingle Ball

Assignment: Make a working musical instrument. It doesn't have to look, sound or work like any existing musical instruments.

Materials: A Devil's Claw pod from Tucson, courtesy of my bro-in-law Rick, acrylics, beads, wire and a bit of hot glue.

Inspiration: I've always loved these amazing seed pods - Rick had a bumper crop of them this year and I managed to bring two home on the plane completely intact. I wanted to maintain the primitive mask look of them and thought a single bell would be sufficient to summon any necessary demons.

This is what the dried pods look like naturally:

And here is one afterwards...

Day 21: Tinfoil

Title: CrispyCritter Lamp

Assignment: Do something with only tinfoil today. How many different ways can it be used?

Materials: Aluminum foil, a votive candle

Inspiration: Spike wisely left the apartment before I could fashion him an alien space helmet, so I went with Plan B. I wanted to make a shadow lamp, using folded layers of foil to try to strengthen the sides, punched holes, which then became bigger and sloppier so I turned the two largest into eyes.

Created a little candle platform in the base for the candle and a hook out of folded and twisted foil.

It sagged in on itself enough to create a sort of head-like shape, and once lit it took on the creepy look of a burned-up, desiccated corpse. 

I actually like this one the best, even though it doesn't look much like a face. I think the contrasting pattern and the liquid vs rough look of the foil, like hardened metal, is pretty cool. Not the sturdiest of lamps, but it did hold up to hanging from my finger!

Day 120: Invent an Animal

Title: The Dreaded 3-eyed Vaccapolypus

Assignment: Create an animal that has never existed before.

Materials: Sculpy, some tiny beads, some tinfoil and toothpicks for support underneath.

Inspiration: I just let my hands decide what sort of animal they wanted to create. Vac here is about 3 inches high. I did want to experiment some more with using different colors of Sculpy and blending, rather than using any paint.

BINKY BONUS!

Title: Binky

Materials: Sculpie, Acrylics, a garlic press to squeeze out strands for his fiery mane, and there's a toothpick support underneath his horn. He's about 3"high.

Inspiration: My brother Jim has always been a fan of my weirdness, and since he is recovering from some major surgery I made BINKY THE MAGIC UNICORN and mailed it down to him with a little extra healing power juju mixed in.

KEEP GETTING BETTER, JIM! I LOVE YOU!!

Day 119: Box

Title: ボックスの幻影 (Ghost in a Box)
Assignment: Make something in a box. Any type of small box will do: shoebox, cigar box, shipping box, even a suitcase.

Materials: Patterned papers, sculpie, paint.

Inspiration: I wanted to make my own box, so found directions on how to make an origami one with lid. At first I thought the little Noh mask I sculpted would be an ornament atop the box, but I liked the shadowbox effect it made resting inside the box better.

Day 118: Wood

Title: Sentry

Assignment: Make something out of wood. (Any kind will do; twigs, sticks, toothpicks, etc)

Materials: Sticks, reeds and pinecones I gathered on my walk around Greenlake, a few strips of Tshirt (I figured all-cotton material qualified), hot glue to keep his parts from crumbling, a little wine for coloring, PS for touchup.

Inspiration: I'd started out trying to make something that'd be disturbing to come upon on a lonely walk in the woods, but I think he turned out to be more happy wood sprite than Blair Witch.  So I added the disgusting strips of material to give him a little more gravitas and hung him from the nearest thorn branch.

Day 117: Go out of your way

Title: Rosemary's Daycare

Assignment: Travel somewhere you wouldn't normally go today specifically to create something inspired by that location.

Materials: Pen, Pencil, Colored Pencil, PS for touch up.

Inspiration: Anyone who knows me knows that the baby section at the local Target on a Sunday is about the last place on earth you'd ever find me.

The long line of strollers stretching on to the Crack of Doom inspired me,

















and I couldn't resist making this quick sketch 'sequel' to the Polanski classic. (If you click the image you'll see a bit more detail :) )

Day 116: Map it

Title: Alien star chart
Assignment: Create something using an old map OR something that ends up looking like a map.

Materials: Photoshop, Fractal generator

Inspiration: I was feeling more 'free form' today, and didn't feel like going "Ye Olde Treasure Map' route in spite of the name of this blog, so I played around with an online fractal design generator and PS, turning it into something an alien commander might consult.

Day 115: Kit-o-Matic

Title: Wall crawlers
Assignment: Find or buy a kit of some sort (like a plastic model kit, a craft-making ki, or an electronics kit), get rid of the instructions and make something that's not at all like intended results.
Materials: Creepy Crawler kit, acrylic paints, torn sketch paper, PS for finishing touches.

Inspiration: I knew that Creepy Crawler set I snabbed at Value Village for a couple bucks would coming in handy at some point. I had one of these as a kid and nearly burned down the house with it.

Today I went through a number of failed experiments trying to use the back side of the molds as impressions for a rub-on technique, then as stencils, then to attempting a sort of alien clown face out of the stencil and some of the 'stretch goop',

but finally the colors on the molds themselves, and the reverse 3D effect (like the busts at Disney's Haunted Mansion) caught my eye as being a lot more interesting and I finally composed them as a slightly Oriental triptych. 

Day 114: TOAST!

Title We'reToast

Assignment: Make something out of toast or bread.

Materials: Burnt piece of homemade olive rosemary bread, knife, pencil, pen, PS for touch up.

Inspiration: I loved those "Wooly Willy" magnetic cards as a kid:  

 So I thought I'd attempt the same idea with toast 'filings'.

And a quick sketch:

To create this guy:

                       

Day 113: Paint the town RED

Title: "She Was Some Tomato."

Assignment: Work only with red materials today. Try working on a red surface for a real challenge.

Materials: Ripened tomatoes, exacto blade, cardboard, red sharpy, scissors, red shopping bag.

Inspiration: I know, you all expected some gruesome bloody red hand or gore-dripping monster. Well, you got his victim instead in this 'film rouge' homage and utilization of yet more tomatoes from the garden. The black spots where the eyes are were on the tomato when I picked it, making it look, naturally enough, like a stricken little face.

Thanks, Noah!

Wanted to share a nerdy gift I received in the mail today - Noah Scalin, the brain behind the 365 project, put out an announcement that he'd send out 'merit badges' to folks who were working on it if we sent him a short vid of our progress and how it had affected us.

The badge is pretty snazzy - machine stitched and sturdy!

I won't WEAR this magnificent honor, of course, until I actually finish, but it was a nice pat on the back for keeping with it.

And if you'd like to see the video I made,  here it is! 

(It seems to work better when you view in 'full screen mode, btw.)

Day 112: Paint Swatch

Title: Sea Sprite C61-2
Assignment: Work with a few free paint swatch samples found at most hardware stores and use them to create something new.

Materials: More than a few free paint swatch samples, chalk, pen, pencil, scissors.

Inspiration: Who the heck comes up with the titles for all these colors? Is that an actual job? Can I have it? Anyway, I gravitated towards all the 'sea-inspired' colors and one of the larger ones gave me the creature to create today. This may be a not-too-distant cousin to my 'self-portrait' banshee back on Day #64.