Sad day as visual effects legend, Stan Winston moves on. He was only 62 and was amongst Hollywood’s leading makeup, visual-effects, and animatronic artists. He worked in Hollywood for more than three decades and there is not a person who watches movies who was not been subject to his magic whether they knew of him or not. Best known for working on such well known films as Terminator, Jurassic park, Predator, The Entity, The Thing, Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, Titanic, Monster Squad, Batman Returns, Congo and many many more.     

For me, this was the man that took puppetry to new heights. Puppets that were so ‘real’ that when you saw them on film that you did not question their reality but rather watched in awe and sometimes horror as they moved about. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, especially the brachiosaur sneezing and the fallen triceratops were fabulous living creatures to stare at in wonder. The alien queen in Aliens bespoke of an artistry that suspended disbelief with ease. A fourteen foot remote controlled monstrosity that took over a dozen techs to operate. Now that’s a puppet!!!     

A sign of mastery is when it looks easy.     

I remember the first time I saw The Thing. It gave me nightmares for a week. The smallest noise and I would wake up sweating. Thanks Stan!!!

Well, I worked the studies for a couple of months and am pretty happy about the fact that my suspicions of floundering skills was just more unmoderated chatterbox chatter. I laid off for a couple of weeks as demands of life and commercial work (hallelujah) and house repair become more overwhelming with the arrival of the fair weather. I used the hour to push other projects along and get a few others wrapped up. Two weeks became a month and that became two months. I have been thinking about the dailies again but realized that I would be better served if I used that time to explore and improve my skills along the lines of watercolor, gouache and illumination work. So, I am in the process of setting that up and rounding up the necessary materials. Dailies will become Studies and these I will endeavor to do most days.  I am working on getting the two months of small oils up for your viewing pleasure. Cheers!!

Saturday was just a beautiful day for a couple of hour drive along the Massachusetts Pike on the way to War of the Roses. The War itself was being held on top of a low mountainous region just outside of Albany at a really large event farm. There were many different fields. One held dozens colliding warriors whilst in another shafts of wood flew through the air. Many other fields held dozens of pavilions of various shapes and sizes and of course there was the vendors run with a couple of taverns to eat at. We spent a better part of our day watching richly dressed people with long swords stab other richly dressed people. We even managed to get in on a short demonstration on the nature and practicality of dagger fighting.

 Part of the reason for visiting was also to see friends and what real camping was all about. Beds and rugs in large spacious tents were the order of the day. A far cry from our previous experiences with sleeping on the ground while wrestling with terrier-sized mosquitos.

We, of course, left more money than we really wanted to in the vendors hands for safe keeping. Some delicious Turkish coffee rounded the day off and by then it was quite time to leave. The drive back was easy as was the drive up. All in all a quite lovely time. Perhaps, one day we might be camping at the Roses, ‘roughing’ it as it were out on the fields ourselves.

This past Saturday, in an effort to support the Barony, I attended the SCA, Barony of the Bridge demo at the 10th Annual Rhode Island Scottish Highland Festival.  Our outfit had been placed at the end of the field because of our needs regarding archery. We made quite a good showing and very popular by all accounts later on. There was plenty of heavy list action all day long and under the tents, demonstrations of arcane arts went on.

In the background of all this was , of course, was the festival itself. Literally dozens and dozens of bagpipers seemed to play all day long, while crowds plied the food areas and the many vendors and exhibitions. There were many tents labelled with clan names and I believe from the roar of distant crowds some of those gut busting heavy item tossing events that those Scottish lads seem to really get into were happening. It was large festival with everything to make a crowd happy. A great time indeed! The weather had turned from storming all night and it was another charming sunny and windy day much like at Balfar’s Challenge.  However, I was not caught unawares this time! Hat and sunblock were in force.

With Mistress Avelina in charge, Aedwyn of Bridge and myself worked the archery field. This work consisted of target shooting and talking to the crowds of inquisitive and surprisingly interested people. I left the bulk of the talking to those whose can do that more judiciously than myself and busied myself by shooing people away from the business end of the archery range. We also had a novelty waterbag shoot where two bags with water were suspended from a rope. The bag that drained first from being hit by arrows would be pulled upward by the other’s weight thus signalling the winner. Crowds really liked this as did the archers. Kudos to the Ralph the Carter for his brilliant design work on the contraption that allowed it all to happen. Many wanted to try their hands at a bow and see what they could do, however we were neither authorized or equipped to let the public shoot. Perhaps next year! There  is just something about shooting sticks into the air that fills one with the happiness. I think it is just the simplicity and chaos of it all : ) 

Below, two of the Bridge’s finest go at it. In the distance you can see the archery range area. Photo courtsey of Alysander Brokentooth.

A week later, I managed to return to finish the dress form. The cardboard form was translated into a piece of 3/16″ luan. This was taped to the bottom sealing that end. This time, I carefully stuffed the dress form keeping an eye on the dimensions. Amazingly enough, I ended up using about a third less material than on the original stuffing. Once up at the shoulders, I noticed the form of the upper chest cavity was tending to round out and on it’s way to looking like a Victorian matron’s bustline.  I placed a, 16″ length,  piece of wood, end to end at the shoulders within the cavity and really stuffed a lot of the batting underneath it so it would push the wood up as it tried to expand. This worked well as it pulled the shoulders back and flattened the upper portion of the chest into what was a more natural slope. The neckline being high enough for my use was simply closed with tape.

 A luan board was cut to fit the stool base. It was taped down and the finished dress form was taped to that.  I used  a couple of shingles between the form and the stool top to level the form. That’s about it. It looks terrific and I am already thinking of making one for corset work. I suspect, I will use this one for awhile first to find out what sort of kinks may need to be worked out on the next model.

My lovely wife and I attended Balfar’s Challenge (04.19.08) up Connecticut way hosted by Duke Balfar and the Barony of Dragonship Haven. It was held in a large field at an YMCA camping area. Fencing was at one end of the field alongside a row of merchants and the archery range was stationed all the way at the other end. The central area being held for the armored types.

 Mistress Avelina Keys, Kenny Paul and I formed the 3- member archery team called the Grumpy Badgers and proceeded directly to first place with our efforts. It was grand day for shooting. Bright sunny and actually a bit windy as attested to by my arrows sailing all over the course. A wonderful dayboard under a large open walled structure took care of the hungry part and a nice place to rest out of the sun for awhile. Of course, there was lots of armored combat action and fast fencing types showing off their martial skills. By the end of the day I was pretty tired and rather red and roasted from the neck up.

By nature, I am a shade critter. Shade critters really don’t think about things like sun-block. Well by the next morning my bald pate was weeping serous fluid and really starting to aggravate me. Looks like I had gotten myself a good case of sun poisoning as my reward for my efforts in representing my Barony, lol.  It is now three days later and the top of my skull looks like an old medieval map. I got some dark red and pinks and some yellow and browns and what looks like a few craters. I am starting to peel bits of vellum too. Terrific. Well at least my scalp is period. 

Note to self. Sun-block and a bigggggggggggg hat.

Today we made a duct tape sewing dressform and it came out pretty good.  Three rolls of 60 foot duct tape, a cheap t-shirt and a little time got it done.  I initially heard about this from a group of SCA friends and was intrigued. I certainly would love to have a dressform of my wife that emulates her unique shape. That and that it costs a lot less than a generic fall apart model cinched the idea. A little research on the web showed that it not an unknown concept and so after some reading and planning, off we went.  A nice set of instructions with pictures lives at http://etsylabs.blogspot.com/2007/03/dress-form-tutorial-want-to-make-exact.html

It took two hours. I started from the bottom and worked my way up twice.

Being in a rush to see what it looks like I went ahead and stuffed the form, cut a quick base out of doubled cardboard and checked it out. It still needed some work so I unstuffed it. Good grief what an explosion of batting and rags. It is pretty amazing the volume of batting that it takes to fill that. We had bought two 32 oz. bags for 10 bucks at Joanne’s and that only went up to the waist.  Cost being a factor, I started scouring up old used up blankets and raided all the material out of a burlap bag that I had been saving as an archery stop. With all that material, I got pretty much up to the neckline. Not surprising, some more changes were in order.

Item 1.  When  stuffing the dummy try to maintain the body shape of the person you are emulating.  The waist basically being spherical in transection can be stuffed badly resulting in not enough distance side to side or front to back.  The volume will remain the same but using the dummy for measuring and such might make a difference. If you stuff  without concern you may well find yourself with a dummy that looks 9 months pregnant, as I did. 

Item 2.  Apparently,  my re-connecting of the back seam where I had cut was not too swift. The waist had grown 3.5 inches,  the hips 4 inches from the original model.  Inspection showed an ever widening gap from the mid-back to the bottom.

Note 3 The cardboard will need to be cut to a better fitting shape.

So, I removed the connecting tape on the back and the seam split open!  I was immediately overwhelmed by the batting. Man that stuff can really just keep compressing into a space.

I had some difficulty try to connect the seam by simply pushing the edges together for when you get to the curves, pushing together does not work.  The solution is to pinch the two edges together a couple of inches high and the simply lay a strip of tape over and rub down both sides smoothly. Once you have connected the back be sure and check inside the dressform in the area of the small of the back. It may likely need a bit more attention. I pulled the neck kerchief piece off and then reinforced the neck, bottom hem and the arm holes  making  for a stronger edging and a more finished look. I re-cut the cardboard to a better shape to fit the base.

My simple solution to the stand is an old rotating stool base. This one is just slightly wider at the seat than the base of the dressform but that is fine as everything I am planning on creating are generally loose fitting items. I suspect a bar stool would work admirably and those things can be gotten cheaply if not for zip anywhere. People are always chucking them away. This stool, which I had salvaged from the bin, was my drawing table seat for about 15 years till the seat disassembled beyond repair. So at this point, I need to scavenge some plywood and build a base for the dressform and another wood base to stool seat and connect the two.

When we were done, we went to exercise the ghost dog in the stool picture and saw these turkeys meandering through the yard searching for grub. Strange to see such big birds casually strolling about. Later!

Hazel Court, 82, has moved on. This talented lady was also a sculptress and a painter. As an actress she was well known to English and American audiences and is probably best known for her work in Roger Corman’s “The Raven” in 1963 when she shared the screen with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.  The Raven is a fun popcorn movie, no doubt. Also well known for her role in in Hammer Studios 1957  ”Curse of Frankenstein”  she worked along side with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Hammer’s films pursued sensationalism, sexuality and violence, and Hazel Court emerged as the studio’s principal female attraction. As a scream queen, she really had the shrieking banshee thing going not that the obvious low cut outfits hurt the movie either ; ).

She did bunches of other work in TV and the movies but these horror movies are the one that I remember seeing as a kid and still watch now and again as they are in my DVD collection.  Her daughter said that she would get over 100 pieces of fan mail a month and she would reply to every single one. Now that is a class act.

04.14.08 Study in working with red paint. Alizarin crimson, Cadmium red light and Winsor Red. Winsor Red is new to my palette. I bought a tube quite a while ago. It looked to be real close to a pure red to me. It worked well, though a bit thin in confirmation for my taste. Nothing that a paper bag soak will not take care of. I found with the addition of Winsor red, I was able to add a mid range red to the study without muddiness. I have been using cad red light in conjunction with alizarin to get a range of reds but because of the secondary color bias of these paints there was a certain amount of graying going on so that it was not possible to get a sparkling clear red. Color induction was used to boost the apparent chroma but it could not relieve the neutralization in entirety. Winsor Red is a welcome addition and I look forward to some red paintings. Perhaps, another painting of Smaug of Hobbit fame may be in order.

04.15.08 Not wanting to do another shiny transparent subject, I cast about looking for an opaque, matte object for contrast…………….ah an old plastic electric drill….perfect!