Du luxe

Hi again!

The buttons, shown before, are part of an idea that I had which consists on "building" an XVIII century character in order to make guided historical walks here in Lisbon.

Alongside with those, others ideas started to pop up - ideas which came out of visual epoch requirements and that ended in good tests towards papercrete.

First used the paste to do the body for a Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago de Espada (order given to artists of merit.

For an XVIII century gentleman would be unthinkable to go on the streets without his cane. My lovely cane is made from a simple brum stick painted in black and varnished with both ends in papercrete.

The top was made out of a simple roll of stripes of paper with a disk shape and then all covered with the paste (used air drying modeling paste on the circular edges) and decorated it with red glass (sort of) bulb I found on the river shore some days ago and some plastic pearls. Painted it in gold and varnished
 For the tip I've cutted the stick a bit in V shape and covered with the paste. After dried I painted it and varnished.
Now the fun fun was making this!

This papercrete ring was made with a simple wire armature covered with the paste. After measuring my finger and making a "bed" for the crystal, started to wrap it with the paste. It took me 2 "wraping sessions" and in the end, after dried, sanded a bit, redefined the crystal edges and marked the spots where I wanted to put the other two (the orange is a real cornaline crystal (excelent to awake artistic "fevers"!!!) and the other two are glass ones (or plastic?)). Then again painted in gold (to match the buttons and cane).

I quite like the result and must say that I'm surprised with it!
Now my question is "is this real a fantasy ring or ... shall I wear it in daylife?" don't know ... What do you think?

How did I ... TRANSFORMATION!!!

Thought about doing a video but as always there is the question "in english or portuguese?" and as I dont know how to put subtitles on videos (yet!) decided to "show it through words (although may sound a bit boring ... )

Creating, for me, is as almost like doing crystal healing or spiritual reconnecting sessions (either on others or myself) meaning I always end up by picking up the right crystal that someone or myself needs. On arts I end up by creating something that simbolizes another something that I may need.

Remember the first photo? Always wanted to make a dragon and so I started BUT within time, after having the "cage" ready and starting to cover it with paper I felt that "it wasnt it" and would have to spend lots of paper to equalise all into the shape I wanted... Once I had the head already modeled with papier mache decided to keep the face and throw the rest away.

 

In the meantime had an iluminated whisper and decided to try papercrete!  Papercrete really answers most technical question I still had whilst working with paper mache. 

But first I had some tries ...

Cutted the dragon's head in two and on one I tried toilet paper with water, cement, oil and glue, the other I used the same ingredients but instead of cement I used plaster.

The plastered one dried  a bit faster than the cement half but wasnt really what I had expected so again it was time to choose and only kept the cement one.

From then on the whole sculpture became like some sort of school course! Made the eye, the "beard" (?) and the small horns out of air drying modelling paste, the big horn was out of tin foil covered in toilet paper soaked on glue and then after dried I've brushed it with liquid cold porcelain, and finally the eye socket, the ear (I'm used to see online dragons with ears but never saw dinosaurs with, so ...), the relief around all the horn, nostril, lips and the membrane below the jaw is made out of soaked toilet paper on glue and then modeled.

The base is made of two slabs of cardoard covered with creamy papercrete (yes, like a birthday cake!)



 






Paint wise used some shiny copper paint, then some gold on top as well as acrilic yellow and some green (still not sure about the green but still .... ) Much much later painted the base with green too (planning to glaze it one fine day, eh eh eh

So the dragon, spirituality, me and myself : on my inner point of view dragons symbolise life energy and indeed I've started doing him when we started to search for a new house, new location, new life. For sure the Sacred Spirit of the Dragon inspired us with his fire!

Thanks 

Papercrete uttons

First of all you have to excuse both my english!

Over two months ago I discovered the wonders of papercrete and been heavily working on it, with it!

To start this blog I decided to open it with butons. With a button you can do almost anything, even kill someone! but thats not why I´m here, no, no! Just want to share with you my thoughts, projetcs, works.

Made these buttons  to use on an XVIII century suit.
They are, as I said, papercrete with a plastic sort of cristal from some silly jewelry you can buy anywhere (at least here), painted first in yellow, then gold and, finally, glued crochet golden thread around in order to stich them later.

Thanks