glass and oil

I wasn't happy with the look of the glass after my first blasting session, so I decided to try a new blasting gun and hit it again. 

It looks way better. Here the vinyl is off 

Since the glass is bigger than my blasting cabinet, I have to go to my secret place to blast (bat cave). That also means I need to wear protection or media gets everywhere. This outfit scares the dogs too!

I wanted to find the perfect finish, so I tried out 3 different ones on scrap pieces of cherry from the sculpture. Top is Danish Oil, middle is wipe-on poly and bottom is tung oil. Such a huge difference, lol. I chose the Danish Oil.

I have added the finish to the front of the sculpture. This gets the finish first because I need to mount the glass and glue the last 3 pieces on and this is the section underneath the glass. Then I will final sand the edges and oil the rest of the sculputre. I think the finish looks great and I cant wait to finish it up. You can really see the difference in the wood where the oil is and is not. 

Almost there everyone, thanks for following.

Assembly

Finally putting things together. 

It's still wrapped with tape, paper and the vinyl. This is the dirty version. After a little clean, It will be clean and shiny. 

Gluing. I started with the back.

Last piece on the back. 

I started with 14 pieces and now I'm down to 5. Almost there.

Thanks for following, the end is near. I just mean the sculpture, nothing more. lol

What's it mean?

While I'm doing the final sanding, I thought I would go over the meaning of the glass design.

The overall design was created using Cherokee symbolism for the client. 

A) There are seven of the short stems with buds representing the seven clans of the Cherokee people. (Wolf, deer, bird, wild potato, blue, long hair and paint)

B) I used the arrowhead plant as requested from the client who fondly remembers them growing up.

C) In the leaf is the veining. The veins create a silhouette of grandmother spider that brought the fire to the Cherokee.

D) The flower blooms have a swirl in the center used in Cherokee pottery and symbolizes the stomp dance.

E) The plants stems, with the combination of the flower bloom, turns into a design resembling a Cherokee pottery border used for thousands of years.

The ends is near for this project. Thanks for following along and stay tuned for the final few steps. Thanks.

Design and Glass Steps

I wanted to focus on the design development and how I apply that on the glass for blasting. 

I use a bit of old school and new school.

The client gave me a specific plant to be used. 

This is called an arrowhead plant and is very common in the Southeastern United States. I had creative freedom beyond that.

So I start with some sketches and trying to work out the different components I wanted to use. 4 feet is a lot of real estate to cover.

I scanned the drawings and start moving them around to get the overall design and try to get an idea on how it will work with the wood. There is a lot of back and forth with the client to make sure they are happy with proposal. This way everyone knows what direction the project is heading toward.

After getting the glass and looking at the perspective, I tweaked the design a little and flipped it horizontally for printing

Now at this point many artists hand the digital file over to a vinyl machine and have it perfectly printed and cut out for them to place it on the glass. I typically do smaller size sculptures and prefer to cut my vinyl by hand.

I print out the design to scale with guide lines to match everything up.

The sheets are all lined up and centered with the glass. I try to have many steps to make sure the design works and to make sure I didn't forget to account for anything.

I apply my vinyl. I use clear because I will draw the outline of the design directly on the vinyl and can see through to my print outs. 

After the design is in place and drawn out. I start cutting. I remove the vinyl that I want frosted and leave the sections that will be clear.

After everything is cut out its ready for blasting.

In this week's next entry I will talk about the design and the symbolism that it represents. 

Thanks

Pegs, colors and routing

Happy New Year!

I rang in the new year in the studio having fun. 

Each piece was inventoried by a letter number system (A1, A4, B2, B6 etc.) I decided to simplify things by color coordinating the pieces with their custom pegs. As you see above, each piece and peg are marked with colored pencil. (green, blue, orange red, etc.)

It's up, It's good!

All the pegs fit great and it stands. The clamps are only there because the pegs are short, but it is standing by itself. Balance is a great thing.

Time to make the glass fit, so I routed out the 2 pieces as needed. 

I did it right the first time, woohoo. Fits great. Time for some final sanding and the glass.

The next post will focus on the glass, design and the symbolism behind it. Stay tuned.