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Making Gandalf's Staff!

Mae govannen! So, this was my first time making an attempt to document my prop making. I took a lot of pictures, but my general prop making policy is keep failing until it works, lol. I learned a lot about the materials I was working with throughout this process so I'm excited to try another prop.

So, the first step is to gather materials! I used:

  • PVC pipe (About 5 dollars for the pre-cut length at Lowe's. It's about 5 feet)
  • Floral wire netting (that hexagonal green wire thing)
  • Expanding Spray Foam Insulation (about 5 bucks at Lowe's)
  • Brown Matte Spray Paint
  • Masking Tape
  • Magnetic Sylvania Push-Button Light (other companies make comperable ones)
  • Fresh Batteries for the light
  • Real Quartz Crystal
  • wire cutters/pliers
  • sanding tool/sandpaper

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Not pictured: The LARGER quartz point I wound up using, Velcro dots, and Acrylic Clear Coat Sealant.

Got your supplies? Let's do this!

Step one involved me making a wire frame shape to rough out what I wanted the "branches" to look like. I decided to loosely base my design off of Gandalf's second staff; the one he takes into Moria with the glowy crystal. His first one was designed to conceal his churchman's pipe but Sarumon destroyed/kidnapped that one...his disdain for Gandalf's smoking habits bled right through, y'all.

By the way, for this step you will definitely need some wire cutters. If you have leather gloves I'd recommend wearing them because cut wires are sharp as anything when you're trying to shape a pile of wirey nonsense into a shape that makes a little more sense. Gandalf's staff had a kind of swooshy tendency for the branches to grow in one direction, so I tried to make them look like the wind shaped this little fallen tree a bit. I secured the base to the pvc with masking tape just to make sure things didn't come apart right at the beginning.

Then came a sortof fun part; I took masking tape and tried to solidify the shape a little bit. I knew I was going to be applying some spray foam, and I wanted to give the foam a place to rest in and actually stick instead of just falling through the wire cage. Also, the tape served as a barrier between my poor squishy hands and the sharp wire-cut edges of the frame. I also had to make sure it was large enough at the base to support my little button light! I put it in and out a couple times during this shaping to make sure it had enough room in there plus some space to allow for the foam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having done that, I had to wait for the weather to clear up so that I could apply the spray foam. Spray insulation is a Serious Substance, guys. Make sure if you're going to spray inside you have a VERY well ventilated area and wear a mask so that you don't breathe in the little insulation particles. This is true also for the sanding/carving stage. If you have pets, make sure you do the foam insulation work away from their fragile little lungs. Also important, WEAR RUBBER GLOVES. If this stuff gets on your skin, it is REALLY hard to get off! Do everything you can not to actually touch the foam. You can sand down the misshapen-ness after it cures. Unfortunately for me, the next clear day was also an INCREDIBLY WINDY DAY. Because the object I was making wasn't a blade or something that could be easily laid on it's side without smashing up the shape, I devised a way to spray it standing up using one of those little backyard drink can holders for bbqs. Pretty sure I got mine at Big Lots, but I was originally going to use the sand spike I have for surf fishing. Couldn't find it. Drink holder it was!

It looks so lonely, doesn't it.

Spraying this foam created a staff shaped tumor monster. It was gross. Foam fell everywhere. If I wasn't crunched for time, I might have gotten more foam to fill out some inevitable bubble-holes, but time and money etc etc. Just do your best to fill every nook and cranny and don't worry about getting things perfect. You can ALWAYS go back and do more. Regardless, I had to move my little spike and staff out of the wind so I wound up shielding it in a thick briar bush to cure. It needs to sit like this for 24 hours to cure/harden. Don't rush the process; in winter it'll go a little slower because it's friggin cold. Don't let it rain on your project, either!

Looks like something Eowyn crawled away from.

Yeah, I know. It's gross. So then once it cured, I took it inside and began using a styrofoam cutter (hot knife) to shave down the shape close to what I wanted this to look like. Again, wear a mask. Just in case. As you can see, there are a lot of air bubbles and cracks, but the material is still pretty flexible; it's dry but it doesn't snap when you bend it like regular styrofoam. Also, surprise!! the core in the middle of this hadn't totally cured and I stuck my finger in a pool of goo-foam. Fun!

So, there's a lot you can use at this point to fill those gaps! You can go another round of foam, spraying one side at a time and letting each side cure for 24 hours, then reshape it and smooth it. You can also use wood filler putty, but that's an expensive venture because you'll need a LOT. There is also a sculpting putty called Apoxie Sculpt that is basically an air dry/hardening clay that runs about 22 bucks a pound and gives things a really nice professional looking surface. The goal here is to create a nice smooth surface for painting. Because I'm poor and try to be resourceful, I took a page from my mom's prop making book of many Halloween Adventures and just decided I would paper mache the thing! That is, white elmer's glue, water, and a little bit of flour. Recipes vary, but they pretty much all work. Check pinterest to find one you like! You can barely see it in this picture, but there's a whole stack of old ads from the newspaper that I tore into various strips to put into my glue soup. The key here is to BE PATIENT. Prepare to make a mess, because you're going to. Glue drops are going to get everywhere; on your shoes, on your floor, on your table, on your cat, EVERYWHERE. Wear gloves! Or lose your gloves and do it barehanded, limiting your activities until you're done with this thing for the next three hours or so. Pee first before paper mache without gloves! Also, paper mache sticks to itself more readily than it sticks to the foam, so make sure you wrap it around itself to create the base you need to work off of. Try to make sure you don't have any gaps. Let it dry! For like, at least a day. (Depending on how many wet layers you slathered on. )

After it dries, it's time to sand down any imperfections (I used a dremel sander, but you can use a sheet of sandpaper too), then spray paint/detail! I used the spray paint inside like an idiot, but it was raining and I'd just gotten over pneumonia. I let that dry for a couple hours each side and tried to keep rotating so as to not have a lot of drips. Then, I pulled out my box of acrylic paint and tried to make things look more organic; darkness for the knot hole areas, greens for the lichens, light browns for weathering, etc. The gnarlier the better. And I kept checking to make sure my little light fit throughout this whole process. I could have gone the LED wires through the PVC route if I wanted to, but I wanted to use parts I already had, hence the battery powered button I could easily remove if I needed to change the batteries.

And here's the almost totally finished result!!

After this, I had to do a couple little things to  make sure I didn't wreck my own prop. I had chosen PVC pipe instead of a wood pole for weight purposes, and if I decided to wire it with LED's at a later time, I could use the hollow of the pole. To secure the crystal ( I had to get a much bigger one because the tiny one just looked so sad in there.) I used a couple of velcro dots to secure it to the sides. It didn't need much to keep it in place, but I wouldn't have swung it around hard enough to launch the rock anyway. There's no room to swing ANYTHING at Katsucon, anyway! I nearly forgot to seal my paper mache, which would have been bad if I had wet hands or it rained or anything, so even though I only had high gloss acrylic sealer ( so it looks like Gandalf's staff had a lovely shiny varnish, lol) instead of the matte I would have preferred, but I think it worked out well enough.

And! It withstood all of my abuse during the convention, and I got a number of compliments on it! I'm always surprised when a plan works out well, especially in the cosplay realm because I don't consider myself your prime-body-type cosplayer, so when things work and people compliment you it's the ultimate praise in making all the work worth it. We also had a professional photo shoot done in the Katsucon Photo Suite, where Ted and Pete did their damndest to recreate some scenes out of the movies for us and generally made us look amazing. The experience really reignited my passion as an artist and a crafter, so over time I may begin offering props at my art tables too in addition to my prints and such.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you make your own (far better than mine, learn from my mistakes and take your time!) wizard staff of any kind!

Happy Casting!

I Have A Cunning Plan

Actually I don't, Baldrick. What I have are several lists and a whole crammed dream-brain of ideas about which projects I want to focus on next, and which products I ultimately want to order for my table efforts, and what I can do to balance that 50/50 fanart/original requirement for my Otakon table. I've begun working on a sortof small pet project that involves painting beta fish with astrological themes, featuring a constellation and a mineral or gem for that star sign. Ultimately, I plan to make stickers of those and possibly an all-in-one print. I thought I'd be farther along on them than I am, but as some of you know I became suddenly ill with appendicitis and had to have immediate surgery. I've been recovering for a week and a half, hating stairs, and still finished my cosplays for Katsucon. The Artist Alley there featured some serious talent, and it was crammed to the brim with people. In other words, I was so overstimulated that I'm pretty sure I missed half of the alley just because I was on some other planet where I wasn't smashed up against hundreds of cosplayers inching through an aisle much hotter than the temperature anywhere else in the convention center. Still, what I did see gave me ideas for what I want to do, and what I DON'T want to do.

Fanart is both fun and dangerous for so many reasons; I get to play with my favorite characters from my favorite series and it's pretty liberating after years of being made to feel shame for my interests. However, I've been made to remember that my fandoms are usually older than my con demographic, that even if I really enjoy an artist's style lacking a character that I am passionate about can mean a lost sale for them, and of course I'm also funny about copyright. As are the owners of said intellectual property, and rightly so. In other words, while my work tends to fill a lot of niche interests, I really need to focus on bracing myself and putting my original ideas out there, front and center. I've had novel ideas for years (and have written quite a lot on them, actually), comic ideas, graphic novel ideas, series and character ideas, and really I just need to try and get my ADHD ass to focus. It's overwhelming. Very, very overwhelming. Marketing is hard, and finding my audience is hard because my audience is scattered around different interests.

I feel caught between several worlds; the one that loves anime, the one that loves literature, the one that loves her Craft (of the Witch Variety) and the Mythology that comes with it, her music fandoms, and the things that have always shaped my personality and my dreams. And of course, everything I do is a mixture of this.

I hope that if I am able to complete at least 2 more of my BTS pics to fill out the members I am lacking, and if I can finish the Nu'est pic I have in mind, AND the zodiac fishies, I'll feel ok with just going nuts on my own original stuff.

Don't let anyone tell you being an artist is easy. There's a lot riding on my success at this, so I feel a lot more pressure than your average bear I think. I have to find a way to make a monthly income to pay for my now copious hospital bills and student loan debt and have enough left to eat. It's not fair to my husband for him to fuss over it because I'm so broken and can't work 9-5.

I've thought about selling my work elsewhere than etsy because of their shady charges and dealings lately, but making my own website to sell from worth a damn would cost about $25 dollars a month I don't have yet. I'm applying to more and more cons and just hope to make back table cost until I become more known as an artist. Ugh.

Anyway, here are two of my fishies. Hopefully I can get something started tonight; the world feels heavy right now.

Animore!

It's been a hot minute but I'm delighted to report that my first full 3 day Anime convention in the Artist Alley was a success! I was able to upgrade my table setup to something far more functional than my GiftsForGamers table. (Though, that was also a success.) At both events, I was one of the lucky few that made up the cost of my table despite the snowstorm, and as a result I've learned so much about pricing and interacting with attendees. I've worked in customer service for so many years but it's quite different when it's your own business (I had some xp growing up minding the family shop) AND your own art and products. I'm so used to my work being 'not good enough' that I'm learning to get the tears under control when people compliment. At any rate, I wanted to share some before and after pics of my setup!!

Sharing with mom:

Alone at GiftsForGamers in PA:

And finally at Animore with my new digs:

I love the way the posters came out, courtesy of Catprint. And my thanks to Mrs Raynor and Kelly Raynor for assistance with button making!

I was also able to launch 4 new prints this con, and I'm so very glad I was able to finish my Devil Is A Part Timer prints on time! (Despite the 8x10s not being completed by the printer...)

And my little DiaPT print that was scooped up and approved by Anthony Bowling and Josh Grelle. (Honestly bless them both, heroes)

I was also able to gift some prints to young fans of the series, which turned out better for them than I could possibly imagine. AND I completed an impromptu commission artist cover for a Captain Marvel comic despite my reservations about the style. It is making me reconsider con commissions, honestly.

All in all, Animore is what it says on the label. A small, relaxed, intimate con with quality programming and plenty of room for expansion and growth. I've added it to my personal list of "must do" cons for the year, and hope to return next year.

My next attendance con will be Katsucon, but I've put out applications for other Artist Alleys! Stay tuned for those updates. :)

-Ash

Inktober Wrap Up

Woof, the best laid plans are easily cowed in the face of ill health! As usual... A third of the way through the month I contracted pneumonia and a fever of 103, in which lifting a pen was too difficult much less drawing a line. I didn't meet my goal of 31 drawings, but I did do the best I could under the circumstances of hospitalization. I definitely ventured into some uncertain waters with my comfort level, as I can pretty much navigate my way around a portrait but fantasy and little creatures and some objects befuddle me. Here are the remaining snaps of the rest of the drawings I managed to complete for Inktober, and I hope to try again next year! Hopefully with more varied inks than simply black and white line-work. :)

And now I must contemplate which images I want to do more with! Color, paint, scan, digital work, flesh out more, etc. What do you think?

20 of 31 pics isn't too bad. :)

Until next time!

-A

Inktober Week 1 Roundup!

My hands are undeniably fed up with my scribbling, that's for sure! I doubt that inking is a medium I'm especially suited for, but I've been enjoying it. Somehow I've actually managed to draw something each day. I haven't been following the "Official Prompts", but I've been enjoying following this list Saraniet_illustradora by another lovely artist. I think this is the most productive I've been artistically in a while, and I'm surprised I made it this far! Here's to 3 more weeks. :)

Whether I revisit any of these in the future and color them or gold-leaf them, I don't know.

To follow my nightly updates, you can find my instagram @firesighted. :) Are you participating? Are you enjoying it so far??

Til next time!

-Ash

Hail!

So for many years now, or since 2008 or so, I've become bolder with my artwork and ventured into the area of art sales on Etsy, plus rare and occasional craft fairs and conventions around town. This year, 2018, I've decided to take things more seriously and focus more effort into my artistic endeavours, which is often difficult for me as someone who is in no way neurotypical, or able-bodied, or healthy. None of those things can be said for me, but what can be said is that I am always trying to improve. I will never claim to be the best at anything, nor am I trying to be. I think people have bigger expectations for me than I do for myself, but I will keep striving to do better...or at least not disappoint people. I paint and draw digitally, traditionally, and use many different mediums that I mix freely. I know the rules and I break them because I feel like it. I have a degree in Science in Theater Arts, but here I am doing photography and art for a living. I had my own studio at the house, but the back room needs to be ripped out and renovated due to a roof leak so here we are in the digital realm, lol. :)

This blog is intended to follow my activity as a transient artist, attempting to help fill the void where a 9-5 job might be for someone who is the opposite of me and blessed with good health. I intend to share some works in progress, con reviews, upcoming events, and other such things as I develop my mini-business and my art styles. I intend to keep my art and event photography separate entities, as much as possible.

At any rate, thanks for checking out my blog and I hope to be of some use or mild entertainment.

Flame on,

Ash

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