How to Overcomplicate Things

When I wanted to spectacularize the gear art with my awesome future brother-in-law what I trying to do was have a large off center gear to focus the piece with trains of different colors trailing off the canvas.

My inspiration was a nebula.

My tool was a piece of cardboard.

Yeah, it didn't really work.

What I ended up was a grey sort of blotchy thing with washers that happened to be stuck to the canvas because the orange paint underneath wasn't exactly dry when I stuck them on.

I'm telling you all this because it explains why I decided to go the long route with my more successful art spasm. (ed- click the link to see the finished product)

See I've read that in watercolor you can use a wimpy variety of tape to select against which areas you don't want the paint to permeate.  I figured that I would give it a try now with the crayon piece because someday I'd like to retry the already explained failure.

First I painted my canvas black so that the entire base would be one color.  Then  I found an acceptable 2D image of a gear* and printed out several sizes.

Because the tape I bought at hobby lobby was too sticky it ripped up the paper underneath as I was trying to detach it from the mold. I got around this by adding another layer perpendicular to the first. After all, the tape has to be able to come off the roll.

I cut out the gears and then arranged them the way I wanted on the canvas.  I unpeeled the tape, then stuck them kinda sorta  where I had painstakingly arranged them moments before.

Then after about a gazillion layers of white spray paint.  I glued the crayons  to the tape in the hopes that it would make the wax look like it was originating from the gears themselves.

Then I melted the crayons and voila! Instant art!

The tape didn't really work as well as I was hoping that it would, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that I was trying to go from black to white.  If I had been going the other way I'm sure it would have performed much better.

*clip art *cough cough*

Melting Crayons on a Canvas

I've been drooling over those amazing melted crayon art pieces for several weeks now.   To anyone who has the internet or has a friend who owns the internet this is probably old hat, but I've finally gotten around to it myself so I thought I'd share.

I already have this awesome piece hanging on my wall so the idea was to do something along the same lines.

No, I didn't steal this from my sister.  Why would you ask that?

See for my Christmas present my sister's fiance and I got together to make some negative space art.  We used little packets of serrated washers from home depot so if you look close the little circles actually appear to be gears.

You just arrange the 'gears' on the canvas in an interesting pattern  and then spray paint over them.

They were a ton of fun to make.

Of course, I tried to get too fancy with mine, and it didn't actually turn out.

That canvas is still actually in my closet, and I intend to apologize to it someday and give it another go.

But we're talking about my new art piece now so I should probably roll that baby out.

please hold your applause until the end of the program

My original intent was to get the color to look like it was oozing from the gears themselves.  But because there was some splatter* and uncontrolled leaking of wax there's too much color above the black bits for that to be the obvious case.

Still, unpredictability is part of the entire point of a medium like this.

And my friend wanted to melt these out.  For Shame!

And you know what?  I love it.   I love that how the wax amalgamating several inches below the gears creates a second line that draws the eyes across the canvas.

I even love how the garbage bag I placed underneath the piece while I was blow drying got bunched up so there are these little ridges a half inch above the bottom of the piece

If you're thinking about trying this I say go for it! It really was the most fun I've had in a while

Now I just have to find somewhere to hang the darn thing.

My next post will show how I did the gears themselves.  It was drawn out and overcomplicated so I feel like you should all appreciate that as well. 

*Mr. Clean's magic eraser really does get crayon off the wall.

Being the Awkward Third Wheel

I was undeniably looking forward to the ward 'date night' scavenger hunt this Friday. As I've mentioned before I don't get a lot of dates so this little activity seemed perfect for me.

See the idea was that every girl would bring an extra shoe, then all the guys would pick out a shoe. Everybody gets a date, easy peezy right?

You would think so wouldn't you?

As could be expected there were a lot more girls than guys.  This in itself is not too terrible a fate, it just ends up being more of a group activity than anything else, and everybody still has fun.

In fact if the guy is particularly witty or attractive the girls can hold an Agni Kai over his phone number later that evening.

 it was just that ended up with a recently engaged couple.

Soooo...  not even a little bit of flirting for me.

They weren't awkward about it or anything, I just haven't so blatantly been the third wheel in a long time.  But let me tell you,  it's like riding a bicycle.

Do you think I was doomed from the start?