Where I Can Be Found….

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

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That’s all I got to say about that…..

Galloping Towards An End Of Sorts….

First and foremost, I still have reservations about the damn coat.  I hate myself.  That’s why I’m drunk at the moment.  But all in all, there was progress.  Mostly hair:

Me bright idea was, get a couple of chip brushes, stain them with water-based stain, and cut bits out and glue them to bits of cloth and glue them to the head of me fella:

Also did a bit of distressing on the workbench, was frankly a bit distressing to me (ha ha):

Then I did a few test shots of the painted head of the fella in the set lighting, just to see what it looked like:

It’s getting there, but I keep hitting that ol’ debbel Creative Apathy, also known as Why Bother, Mate.  The hair makes me happy, but the coat thing still sticks in me craw.  Feh.

In other news, the overall look of the set is pretty much done, the Shots are mostly set in me head, and it will take me maybe a couple of days to get the workings of the DSLR under control.  And I’ve started asking around for folks’ opinions for programs for working with RAW format.  So, ya see, I do have a handle on things….

Also, anyone know of a position opening for a lower-level IT tech?  ‘Cause I got taxes to pay soon….

What A Difference A Brow Makes….

So I go to the workspace today, wanting to do some more tinkering on the Figure head, and I see this:

At some point in the past few days, the floor of my set heaved up as if something chthonic decided to invade this particular manifestation of reality.  At first I thought there was water damage from the recent rains, but the whole thing was dry,and the fellas at Fog Manor tell me nothing untoward occured.  So the best that I can come up with is that I already had a certain amount of tension set in the floor, what with all the forcing of pieces into place, and then I rubbed the floor down with a few doses of linseed oil, which, I suspect, made the wood a little more hygroscopic than usual.  And the parts that ended up welling up like Old Scratch was comin’ for ya was actually glued to the fabric seam of the two-section sub-flooring I fabricated.  So, I suppose I made more work for myself.  I also wrestled with the Figure’s face a bit more:

He seems to be a bit more humanish, and once I sand dow the rough bits and pound that nose down a bit, I’ll start figuring out how to work the face with paint.  Also, I have hair to prep.  I also dressed the set a bit more with distressed bits of paper, which I’m rather pleased with.  Except for the Lovecraftian attempt to loom up from the middle of my goddamn set, it was a Good Set Day….

Maladjusted Soulless Windows and Distressed Ephemera….

So I’m still alive, just been taking time being Artistic, as well as Reading Stuff.  Nearly everything needed for the Photography Project has been dragged over to the workspace, including the figure and the stuff to make the figure more figure-like.  The beginnings of a head were soon formed:

Then, I jammed eyes into the face, and they ended up being a bit bug-eyed, so I had to dig out eye sockets and try again:

Of course, this head looks nothing like the original Brother Quay figure (mine is dressed better, for one), but there is a level of accuracy that I wanna hit, so that profoundly Mediterranean nose is gonna get ground down a bit, and the brow built up, and then paintbrush hair applied, and then the hands attached, and then the buttons glued on, and then the coat trim trimmed, and then I think he’ll be ready for the camera.  The set is almost there as well.  I did a bit of tweaking with bits of paper and found illustrations that fit the Open Book:

I really need to get momentum going, which is what next week is for.  I also have to take a crash course on how to work the DSLR I’ll be working with, as everything indicates that I’ll have to be shooting in RAW format, due to the scale of the subjects.  Also, there’s a selection of lenses that may come in handy….

Where I Can Be Found….

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

My Bloglines
Flickr
Twitter
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Netflix
Whitechapel
Last.fm
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I’m always open to new linkage/followers/”friends”/stalkers/assorted hangers-on….

Because It Occurs To Me To Do So….

It seems to me that I’ve been spending much of my time speaking here of my Photography Project, and while that has been paramount of my thoughts for the moment, it has not been the sole concern of my entire life thus far.  And because of this particular observation to oneself, I find that I should in fact share more of the Bits and Pieces of Life So Far.  Thus, attend:

The last couple of months have been bereft of Interesting Movies & Such, at least via Netflix.  A few nifty things that I can in good conscience recommend are: Burn Notice, which plays like an interesting mix of MacGyver, A-Team, Magnum PI, set in Miami, with Bruce Campbell – Torchwood continues to be interesting – The Sandbaggers proved to be a damn fine BBC spy series, if one is able to be enthralled by Talking Heads In London Offices Talking Spy Stuff, which is actually better than it sounds – the domestic release of Spaced was welcome, I ended up watching the entire series in a single viewing – Doctor Who continues to push the self-made envelope of its own mythology – I re-viewed the first series of Connections, and found it still sharp and relevant to these Interesting Times – Lost continues to provoke with the promise of Something Relevant and Plot-Specific, but to No Avail….

I wish I had something to say about Film, as in films seen in a theater, but nothing has really caught my attention thus far.  I will certainly make it to see Coraline this coming Feb 6th, but beyond that, I can’t say that anything really has caught my attention to date.  Sad, really, ’cause film has been important to me for the longest time.  At one point I had thought to do a bit of a Review Of My Collection kinda postings here, reviewing my DVD collection and talking about why they were important to me, but that has yet to happen, methinks.  Beyond this, well, there’s still Netflix….

Book-reading, while still having its foot caught in the beartrap of doldrums of inactivity, continues to be a Thing That Demands Attention, as it should be.  The span of reading material has been varied and wide-spread, such as Spook Country by William Gibson, The True History of Chocolate by  Sophie Coe, Wormwood by Ben Templesmith, a few Hideshi Hino horror manga, Money Shot by Christa Faust (that was rather brilliant), re-read From Hell and Promethia by Alan Moore, re-read Approaching Oblivion by Harlan Ellison, and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (not so brilliant).  I haven’t been on a Proper Book-Buying Binge in a while, and I think this should be rectified fairly soon….

Music, curiously enough, seemed to spike in Overall Interest these days, don’t know why, although it’s easier to download and play a Nice Tune whilst burning one’s time online that being offline and reading a book or watching a movie.  There may be a lesson in this, somewhere….

So iTunes sucked up a bit of my gig count with tunes, some of which was basically my fault, since I was the one who dropped the catalogue of Philip Glass and Reverend Horton Heat and Cocteau Twins and Diamanda Galas and Django Reinhardt into the mix.  The latest nifty-keen things found in the past few months have been Vermillion Lies, Jill Tracy, Secret Chiefs 3, Lazy Ade Monsbourgh, Zoe Keating, Apocalyptica, and discovered Kraftwerk and Devo….

So what does it all mean?  Means I need to Read More, as in Book-Like Material instead of Digital Nonsense.  Listen to More Music.  And maybe Leave The Room and Step Outside To Do Stuff More Often.  True,  I made it to the Edwardian Ball last weekend, but only to one of the three days.  I seem to miss more things that I intend to experience than actually Experience Them.  This, I think, needs to change.  Of course, one can make tha argument that the Arty Crap that has been claiming much of my time has been Claiming Much Of My Time, but then again I know this isn’t true.  I fuck around more than I’m willing to admit, and this can, and should, be directed to Other Activities.  Once upon a time, I actually got up and read for two hours before going to work, and then after work, I read for another two hours before watching a movie.  Of course, this was before I became entangled in blog reading and such.  Steps need to be taken, methinks….

So there you have it, folks.  The State Of Being at this end.  More to come as information warrants….

How To Get A Head In One’s Project….

Firstly, one needs to make a skull….

So how I have it worked out in my head is I do up a cork skull that slips over the sketch figure head, and then build it up with clay to the form desired, and then paint and attach hair.  Why a cork skull?  ‘Cause clay doesn’t stick too well to a varnished wooden stick, and if I just happen to drop him, I can glue or re-work the bits back onto the skull without having to do the whole thing over.

I would have done more, but I had a laptop (not my own) to beat down for being infected with Bad Things, and did fed and state taxes (not my own) to Suitable Completion.  Also, I did a “stress test” of the hands:

They are nicely flexible, but they work very much like tacky skin over squishy flesh, so the finger “flesh” can be distorted accidently, and dust and fingerprints show up on the “skin” surface.  They work as I had hoped, but there’s an unforseen level of tweaking that is needed.  Ah well, it’s not like I’m doing anything constructive around here…..

So Is It A Particle Or A Wave?

Photography Experiment #3 occured last week, and I only just got around to going through the results.  This was more of a lighting and f/stop experiment than anything else, so I didn’t bother making the Subject Very Interesting, I just set up a light and shot a sequence of f/stops.  Which is why these all kinda look the same.  Only not….

I started with a yellow low-watt bulb that I had lying around.  I was fundamentally looking for a “magic hour”/firelight-and-brass look for the light:

Then I tried a brighter soft white bulb with a bit of yellow gel:

And the ferthehellofit, I shot with the bare bulb – oddly enough, a 400 speed came out the best:

It was about this time that I noticed the shadows under tables and such, so now I know I’m gonna have to set up a bit of a reflector off to the opposite side of the lighting.  And then, out of curiosity, I shot with the In-Camera sepia function:

Thus proving that in-camera effects are fer crap.  Finally, I did Yellow Bulb with Yellow Gel:

I think I almost got it with the Yellow & Yellow at Lower ISO, but I’ll have to do a bit more with the DSLR on RAW to see how they pan out.  There’s only so much one can get out of a point-and-shoot, least of all Depth of Field….

Because This Is More Important….

So I did a second session of test shots with variable lighting, of which I think some of them came out pretty nifty.  And while I had every intention to post them here, I recently (as in about twenty minutes ago) discovered a more Important Subject.

According to Wikipedia, and who are we to dispute such a bastion of knowledge, tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday.  And this kinda has a bit of meaning to me….

See, Poe was my touchstone of Recognition In Companionship in my formative years.  If someone somewhere that I crossed paths with knew of The Bells or Hop-Frog or (my “unknown” favorite) King Pest, then it made that person’s stock rise in my esteem.  Using Shakespeare was too easy in some circles (unless one started to talk about Titus Andronicus), but Poe, that was really was the linchpin for a great deal of my at-the-time growing lifestyle.  Some years, that’s how I spent Halloween, sneaking swallows off my parents’ stash of rum and Napoleon brandy and reading selections from my leather-bound copy of Edgar Allan Poe bought in the same month as my slipcased/numbered/signed edition of The Essential Ellison.  But Poe was more important to me than Ellison, in the long run….

I once had to read The Raven out loud to a class in my junior year of high school.  I’m not exactly sure how that panned out for me, I was hardly the extrovert of the class, and I hardly dressed up as Robert Smith in high school, but there I was, reading The Raven to my less than enthusiastic schoolmates.  And while I wish I could say I killed ‘em with the reading, I did, in fact, keep them silent and attentive for the better part of twenty minutes.  Which beat the teacher’s high score by a good five minutes….

Of course, a sizable portion of Poe delight rests upon the work of Roger Corman, what with his Poe Cycle of films that brought the stories to a gory Technicolor wonder to an impressionable individual.  Many of a Halloween film festival in my house started with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff doing magical battle in damn-nifty-chairs.  I thing my home decor sensibilities were colored by that film….

I think Poe is a Literary Gateway Drug – We are made to read Poe in high school, and from this we are suddenly made to realize that the authors that we are made to read are inspirations to Other Authors, many of which are not Authorized by any scholastic reading curriculum.   Poe leads to those authors that no one is required to read in school, but someone somewhere says hey, ya know, Stephen King digs Poe.  Or Harlan Ellison digs Poe.  Or Clive Barker digs Poe.  Or Ray Bradbury digs Poe.  This, of course, is something that I’ve been meaning to speak about at length at a later date, the idea that Present Authors Are Influenced By Past Authors, and Past Authors Gain Renewed Followings From Commendations From Popular Author, but I haven’t the wherewithall to do so now.  Suffice to say, reading Poe, and then reading the works of other people that loved Poe was the beginning of experiencing  the broad spectrum of fiction.

It was, and still is, a comfort, reading the plights of the protagonists of Poe.  After all, that what the protagonist was going through in a Poe story can be fundamentally a hell of a lot worse than what one may be going through in one’s meager youthful life.  Perspective, after a fashion….

I have a niece, who turned three last December, and I look forward the day day when I can give her a Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe, and (assuming she has more of my family’s blood than her father’s) she starts to read Poe and ask her uncle about more of this damn-nifty stuff that was written more than 125 years before she was born.  And then I can start introducing her to the wide variety of Fiction That Is Not Like The Norm.  And if, as a wise man once said,  you have to ask what that means, you’ll never know….

Is It Grainy In Here, Or Is It Just Me?

So Experiment #2, this time utilizing a tripod and a 1600 ISO setting on the smaller digital camera, is a bit of an exercise in grain.  The set looks good, though….

All done with a yellow light bulb – next up, experimentation with lighting.  And something with less grain….