Altered Vessels Studio

It’s been a doozy of a week friend so I haven’t made much progress this week. And the progress I did make was undone by my impatience so we had a lil lesson of acrylic vs gouache paint which I’ll get to later…

I’ve been trying to think of a relatively easy way to mimic the brocade/damask pattern on iii’s jacket. Looking for patterns led me down a rabbit hole of brocade vs damask types which I won’t bore you with here as I’m sure your googling abilities are well formed.

I could do something freehand abstract resembling a brocade but I’ve been toying with the idea of finding a simple pattern and print it in out with my cricut to act as a stencil on the back of the jacket and arms and I can freehand join the patterns together. It’s going to be a pain in the a$$ to pluck out the tiny parts of the vinyl but if I paint the pattern in a slightly more glossy finish to give it a distinctive but subtle texture to the matte jacket I think it’d be pretty effective.

I actually like the idea of putting the skull from the first image in the middle of the second image to create my own design. What do you think? The first one would drive me to an early grave trying to pluck a mini version of that as it has waaaay too many mini details. The simplicity of the second one (or third) with the added skull just draws me. So now I’ve gotta learn Canva…. 😑

I did try to start painting iii’s mask this week but when I raided my paint stash I found no yellow or gold acrylic paint but I did have them in gouache which can work with acrylics but not in this application… Because I was itching to start I just had to try it anyway but because gouache ‘reactivates’ when other liquid, including acrylic paint, touches it and it doesn’t dry properly so your finish gets all gunked up as you disturb the initial layer. I messed around with it a bit and did actually get some good sponging practice for the texture of his mask before wiping it all off with water and cotton balls and remind myself to be patient until I went to the craft store the next day. It came off pretty easily and I secretly love the black and gold mask look! I did have to get into the cracks to get it out but it looked great as is too.

My patience was rewarded as I went to the shop and they just happened to have a sale on paint so I got some decent acrylics for not a lot of dollars each. I had a squiz in the fabric off-cuts bin and did a double take because there was a scrap of red satin that is the exact match for his ruffled shirt in the spacebuns look! Broke the bank and cost me 50¢ so I’m going to cut some mini ruffles to see if I can replicate his shirt it without it looking naff.

I may have gotten some gorgeous new clay smoothing tools because they looked so beautiful and really I was just looking for one of the rounded smoothing tools but ooops! It slipped into my cart when I had to buy a second clay extruder… So the first one broke from the brute force of my girly muscles squeezing the grip. Definitely because of how strong my girly muscles are and not the inferior quality of the extruder at all. This new shiny green one has a screw/swivel mechanism rather than squeezing the lever so hopefully that can withstand the force of the clay squeezing through. The smoothing tool set came with a little container that is just the perfect size to fit all the extruder discs. Just gotta love when the planets align like that.

It’s a long weekend here for the King’s birthday so I’ll have some time set aside to try out my new paints and do a bit more sculpting on the iv build since I’ve started that one in the background. I just want to get back to clay modelling again as it just hits that creative flow state in my brain y’know? 😁 It’s bloody freezing outside as we’re having a bit of a rainy cold snap so I’m all rugged up in my comfiest soft trackies with paintbrush in hand, the kettle is about to boil so I’ll have a hot cup of tea in a sec and that’s me for the afternoon.

I hope your weekend is as warm and cosy as mine is.

Worship 🖤