Altered Vessels Studio

I hope you’re comfy as it’s a bit of a long one today friend as we’ve got some stuff to discuss. So this polymer clay thing is a bit of learning for me and I’m dragging you along kicking and screaming whether you like it or not (I hope that you do though💘). I’m passing on my ‘lessons learned’ so that if you try your hand at this sculpting caper that you have a quicker journey of it.

Although I guess the learning and improving IS part of the journey huh 😉

ANYWAY I need your help so I have two polls to help me decide ii’s future. What I’ve discovered recently is twofold. Firstly, I don’t like sculpting “things”. Like drums. People, freaky creatures, animals yes. Hours of yes. Replicating real life objects, not so much. So while the sculpting part is fun, it’s not a good use of my creative time which at the moment is somewhat limited due to real life and having a day job. All that boring stuff y’know.

So let me set the scene for my poll – I had a horror day in the studio while making the tin foil forms for the drums – I had to cut tin foil bleeeghhh😬 I made the floor tom a bit too tall so had to cut it in half and oh boy…. I had to put my headphones on and up loud so as not to hear the cutting noise brrrrrr. Sets my teeth on edge just thinking about it as I could feel the vibrations through the handle. I did buy a second hand pasta maker for $2 so I can make lovely smooth sheets of clay to cover the foil drum forms (and iii’s mask straps this weekend).

I’m a bit of a YouTube addict and use it to learn what I don’t know so I’ve been watching clay tutorials (from some seriously amazing artists holy shiz!). One tool missing from my arsenal that I apparently really need is a clay extruder (basically a cake decorating tool). It presses out fancy decorative shapes like spaghetti and flat strips and holy shiz would that help a lot of the finicky details I want to make on these builds, ii’s particular – the drumsticks, scythe necklace, bicep laces detail (not to mention the side metal screw (?) doovalackies between the rim bands on ii’s drumkit – I am not musical so nfi what they are). It’ll really help improve the quality of the builds so I’m going to grab one to make my life easier.

So adjacent to all of this is the newly discovered fact is that we’ve just acquired a new resin printer at work (!!) and will probably need some test prints… say miniature drum kit sized test prints perhaps?

Seriously, look at how beautiful ii’s drum kit is! I had no idea on the gorgeous wood grain until I was looking for reference photos as I’m normally watching his playing in vids n whatnot. That tigers eye look will be fun to mess around with paint and replicate. I just feel the maaaybe the resin kit will do it more justice… maybe…?

(All of these images are anonymous shares on facey so I can’t properly attribute them sorry. The middle one may be the Drumeo interview?).

Anyway I got distracted sorry – So my conundrum is this – do I continue with the clay version OR do I resin print a kit? Actually I think I just answered my own question while I typed it out… the answer is both 😁 Becaaaauuuse there are going to be multiple versions of ii and his drum kit. But I think I’m going to use the resin printer version for this build as I’m just ITCHING to do other things than finagle this kit.

Part of my issue is that I spend SO much time finessing the details as I want the edges to be crisp and I even swapped clay types mid wrap. The skin of the drum is Sculpey Medium and I did one set of rims before tearing it off and switching to Sculpey Firm as I kept smooshing the crisp band edge with my sausage fingers so I’d have to crisp it up again. The firm clay holds the details a lot better. I almost wish there was an extra firm version.

The new clay extruder thing will help refine the details of the drums so maybe I’ll come back to it after I’ve got a bit of this creativity busting out of me at the moment. There’s a part of me that wants to keep true to the “v1.0 is always crappy which is why you make v2.0” thing but already I’m jumping ahead in my mind with what I’ve learned. Until I decide what I want to do I’ll just pop it in a plastic tub and finish it later after I’ve moved on with a more creative part of the builds for a while.

But a poll cuz I’m interested in what you think of my ramblings:

And second learning – as I said above, this polymer clay thing is a learning curve for me as I’ve only played with pottery clay previously and polymer clay has a totally different texture and physical properties (like how it smooths). I’ve discovered that these properties differ between different brands. That combined with improved technique through mucking around with the clay and useful tools means that the quality of the stuff that I can sculpt has improved since I started the ii and iii builds.

Which means that I now KNOW I can do better on the buckles at the back of ii’s head using the Sculpey clay. Crisper details, less clunky looking. I also have better tools to make them crisper and less clunky. So… do I cut all the purple off or just keep going with the build. Damn my perfectionist’s artistic brain! Because I know this, I can’t help but wrinkle my nose when I see what’s there but in the name of the build process, there’s half of me that wants to leave it as um ‘humble’ as it is – the fact that it’s already baked on there, rock solid, and it’s going to be a pain in the a$$ to have to grind it all off. It’s not as if I actually NEED extra work at this point…. And as this is part of a process, I already know where I’m going to make improvements on future builds so that was kinda the whole point of doing this was it not?

There’s a bunch of “inspired by Sleep Token music” sculptures that are just ricocheting around my brain bursting to be made. I think my insomnia is going to work in my favour once I can get my tired ass out of bed and to the studio instead of staring blank eyed into the darkness. Probably a more productive use of my time eh?

I’m trying to find a good ‘mood board’ app type of thing to make some visuals so I can translate what’s up in my head with you more coherently so that you can get a bit of a preview of what’s to come as I’ve got a list a mile long of things I want to make so I hope you’re comfy with your favourite beverage nearby. If you have any ‘visual mood board’ app/software suggestions I’d welcome them via my email or leave a comment below. (thank you!)

Coming up in the next two weeks I’ve got some quality sculpting time locked in so I’m hoping to get ii and hopefully iii’s build finished (and maybe started on something else…!).

Let me know what you think in the polls above, ii’s future depends on you! 😁

Worship 🖤