face time

It's a start.  Let the yellow/grey Milliput dry, do the details in white Milliput when I get it.  I'll also do one separately in clay, and use whichever comes out the better choice.

(Sunday evening) Discovered that Mod Podge with sawdust is a nonstarter, the result just falls apart.   Also, Milliput does not  adhere to Paperclay, so I gave those sections of the 1/12 a coat of Mod Podge.  Sanded down the staff, will give the lower band of the headpiece a thin layer of putty to widen it, set it apart from the main body to stand out as separate.

Man, the model kits that are out these days...(salivating).  Way too expensive though.  There's an Yvonne Craig Batgirl I want on the more affordable side (still thirty to forty bucks) and a Catwoman ...but I'd rather have an Eartha Kitt.  Julie Newmar was the actress who was allowed to sex it up, but Kitt pushed my buttons.  For hardware there's a 50th anniversary Starship Entrprise from Polar Lights in a huge box, with visible bridge and shuttlecraft bay for something like $160.  Damn.  Instead I bought some X-Acto sawblades for ten dollars.  I will probably never have that Enterprise...but if I could have a USCSS Nostromo that I built myself from scratch, that's worth pursuing.

Some friends in New York will be launching a podcast on Monday, May 1st at 1 PM (I'm pretty sure they mean NY time, so that's 10 AM West Coast).  "The Lat, Late Show".  That's not a typo as the announcement repeats it several times.   We're all fans of Night Vale, The Black Tapes, and Tanis so I'm wondering what they may come up with. 

(Tuesday)
That perfect staff is three quarters of an inch too short.  Minor setback,  the headpiece is salvageable with only the main body of the walking stick needing redone.    Primed the hand, I have some white primer already but grey is better for revealing problem areas.  Insides of the fingers look a little fuzzy, there are more divots to fill in with Squadron.  At this scale I think floral wire is too thick, and I will have to try Milliput over thinner  wire.  I'll want to try a female figure at 1/12th scale just to have done it, then in future stick to larger scales. 

I've prepped a few more future drawings, including one of Shanna Evans that is simple and straightforward.  Maybe I'll do that next to clear my head.  Trying to find a subject for ballpoint that feels right.  There's a good Fay Wray shot that's perfect but might be more involved than I want to do right now - need a quick  fix, one I can just finish.  Everything worth doing takes time, and I'm not patient enough at the mo' to deal with  time.  Tired, don't care.  Fuck everything.

Can't sleep.  5:30, been up since two and didn't sleep then either.  Can't not feel.  Can't calm my mind.   Gonna be a long, shitty day. (...)  (near noon)  Two hours or less sleep.  Make a library run, try to work on something when I get home.  (4 PM)   The primer is old and does not want to dry.  I'll have to give it several days or maybe strip it and hope it doesn't affect the Sculpey or putty.  Figures, I finally had it where I wanted it.  That is one of the tricks to smoothing flaws, if I have to resort to it: using too much enamel paint.   Anyway, The hand is sitting on a high shelf in the kitchen, getting plenty of air.  I was hoping to meld it to the arm. 

Ah, sound of rain outside.  Soothing.

(Thursday evening)
Full night's sleep, finally.   No dreams of, no messages from, no sign of Dana.  I bit back a full vent a few days ago, not posted, deleted.   The feelings don't dissipate, any of them.


 
I have a 1/6 resin kit of Yvonne Craig, and while the face is close, something I can't quite pin down is throwing it off.  Looking at a profile shot of the real Craig, there's a...convexity, convexness? ...to the plane of her face that makes the model's face seem almost concave.  Her cheeks don't come forward enough, and when I bring them out with putty it will threaten to make the eyes seem sunken or the nose too shallow.  Hmm.  Shape under the lower jaw is wrong.  The ears are terrible, and can definitely be improved.  Meanwhile, seems like a good idea to try to replicate this head on its own.  Mimic it, then see how I can change it.  Make it a new face altogether?  Learn the formation of the features.  Good practice and it might even yield a usable head.   The kit leans ridiculously and has to be redone, I don't know how it got past the casting stage like this.    needs a base too.  I wonder how I can make a  full-length dressing mirror with a real mirror but in scale?  Oh...should do a search on that, seem like it might already be a thing to accompany scale dolls.

The last time I tried to replicate a head I got hung up on the eyes. I tried to use pre-formed eyes, and could not get the size to look normal.   Too small or too big and generally too far apart or too close together.   When you look up the size of a human eyeball, you learn it's about an inch.  When you try to find out how far apart they are, you're told the distance from one lacrimal caruncle to the next.  Sorry, no, that wasn't the question and it does not help place the ball of the eye.  How far apart are the actual orbs?  Not the eyelids, the eyes.  I still don't know.  "The eyes are placed apart by the space of one eye."  No, no they're not.   That's only  the visible part of the eye you're telling me about.   I'm not doing a drawing, I'm trying to place the eyeballs physically.

There's  a car ad that's been playing, featuring a designer honing an automotive shape.  The ad begins with a lightscape that doesn't reveal what you're looking at...just that it is something sleek.  I keep seeing it as a wicked cool shape for a spacecraft.  If it's a small one-man fighter I might have to break up that nice line with a bubble canopy. Now, that's a consideration...does a small ship need a canopy?  I think we get those in sci-fi just to give a sense of scale, and subliminally allow the audience to connect with the design, but so they make sense?  I guess that depends on whether we assume the material is glass or some futuristic transparent metal.  Yes, Nasa uses glass.  But then, the Mercury  capsules weren't going into combat.  You see what I'm getting at, right?  Vulnerability.  You don't need a window if you have screens and monitors.  OTOH you'll want a viewport if the power fails.  Maybe anopy covers with manual explosive bolts?