On that which hides in the darkness of Quebec City

I recently went on a photo shooting spree in my town. All in all, I took around 350 pictures; after cleanup, I ended up with 68 of which I was proud. Here, I shall share a couple of those 68 pictures. Enjoy!

Finished small projects - Steampunk Skull and Memento Mori

Hey there you jolly ghastly bunch o' fun!

Just finished two smallish projects I started earlier.

You might remember the steampunk skull

(part 1 - part 2 )

Well, it's done! Finally, it's not very steampunk... for the sake of practicality (I use the skull as a model when drawing or sculpting), I decided to forget about over steampunkish accessories, and went with the plain & simply. I was satisfied with simply aging the skull, changing the teeth, and replacing the shiny steel hardware with something less new-ish.

Unfortunately, I dropped the skull's lower jaw once. Over stone tiles. A lot of teeth were knocked off, and I was too lazy to glue em back in. Instead, I used my trusty rotary tool, and drilled holes where the teeth used to be. Afterwards, I slopped the same wood stain I used on the rest of the skull on the jaw, and gave it a dip in dust & ash to make it look old & grimy.

In this picture, you can also see the new screws I stuck into the jaw. They are of a blackish, old oxydized steel, with brown and blue "highlights".

Of course, just sticking in screws is boring, so I glued on the exterior of the jaw a few tiny bits of metal, to make it seem like it was old rusty bolts held on with brass nuts.

I then added thick red rubber bands to hold the jaw to the skull. It'll break more easily than springs, but it is easier to replace, and I didn't like the look of stainless steel springs.

Now, other then that, I finished a small "memento mori" shadow box. Memento Mori simply means remember death, or more precisely, remember that you will die. That was a perfect sentence to go with a human metatarsal I had laying around in my appartment (don't ask.)

I used a cheap balsa shadow box I bought at the dollar store. Not satisfied with the natural wood finish of the shadow box, I went to work.

I wanted a black frame, but I didn't have any black paint left (gasp!). Looking for a solution, I recalled a few pieces of furniture I saw somewhere once, which were made with scorched wood, coated with resin for protection. I decided to try it out on my frame.

This is what I started out with:



I simply took out a propane torch, and scorched the wood of the frame, being carefull not to burn too deeply so that the frame still had a certain substance. You don't want ash, you want a fine layer of cracked charcoal.

This is what I ended up with:

In this close-up shot, you can see more easily the texture of the wood. Keep in mind that I covered it with epoxy resin so it wouldn't crumble or stain everything it touched.

Afterwards, it was simply a matter of adding a black felt background, cutting a banner from aged paper, writing the wanted sentence on it, and gluing everything down (including the metatarsal) with more epoxy. I used 5 minute epoxy from the dollar store, but you can use whatever you want.

That's all for now, peeps! I ordered a few insects from my favorite seller on ebay, so be ready for more insect mounting pictures soon!

see ya later.

Oh, by the way

I just wanted to share this picture of the street I'm currently residing in.

Links zwo drei vier

Hey there! long time no see. That's because I moved out july 5th to Quebec City, and I just got Internet. I don't have much to offer you craft-wise, unfortunately (although I plan to do a wee bit of taxidermy and entomology mounts after pay day), so you'll have to be satisfied with a couple of links.

Playing with Dead Things: The owner of Ironcircus.com presents a walkthrough of her dead pet rat's mummification. Rat guts ahead!

11 Old and Grungy Film Textures: Scans of Daguerrotypes in high resolution to be used as textured layers in photoshop or whatnot. Very useful!

160 Old Paper Textures: Exactly what it sounds like!

Guide to Synthetic Hair Extensions: Lots of info about synthetic hair, most notably how to make and insteal fake dreadlocks.

Monsterlist of Halloween Projects: Lots of tutorials on creating halloween props, costumes and effects. Lovely, and huge!

That's all for now folks. I'll try to share more later on.

Ugh

I just accidentally deleted my Analytics account. Gah.

Transi: A (Final?) Update

If you looked through my whole blog, or have been following me for quite some time, you might remember about the Transi, a small figure I sculpted in oil-based clay a while ago. Well, to put things plainly, I fucked up. My plan was to mold the sculpture in a latex skin, then create a plaster mother mold over it; bad idea. Latex will have a hard time curing when it's brushed on oil based clay. I should have made an alginate mold, then a resin or plaster cast, and THEN create the latex mold over the resin or plaster copy.

But what is done is done; I acted without thinking thoroughly and ended up with a sloppy mold, on which lots of detail was lost, and the original sculpture isn't in good enough condition to create another mold.

I wasn't going to let all this work go to waste, though. Thus about two days ago, I decided to try casting a plaster copy using the crappy mold I made. The casting process went absurdly well considering how bad I am at making molds & casting stuff. If it hadn't be for the poor quality of the latex impression, I would have had a perfect copy of the original sculpture.

Here's what I ended up with:

On makeup, wounds and bruises - A short walkthrough

Today I took part in a very fun boredom-busting rainy day project with my best buddy and his girlfriend. Basically, I did the makeup for a gory photo shoot. The goal: beat up a bit the girl and hang her with fish hooks going through her skin.

Now, being obsessed with body modifications & piercings, if I was the model, I would've filed the barbs off the fishhooks, pierced myself with a sterile piercing needle and run the fish hook through it. But the lovely Mirenda isn't as masochistic as me, so I had to find a way to do this without harming her. It was pretty easy.

First of all, take a before shot of your model. Having a kitten in the picture helps attracting your audience. Promising a kitten at the end of the post helps keeping your readers hooked. Thus, keep on reading, and you won't see one, but TWO pictures of cute kittehs.