February 9, 2012

Well, Ninth Runs Wild certainly can't miss an update on the 9th! Here's another piece of artwork that I created last semester. It's actually pretty ironic that I've created a wire frame of a raven in real life, while all of my work on the fine arts video game will be flat 2D.

Technically, this is an unfinished piece. It was going to be the armature for a papermache sculpture, but now this raven will be getting a paper and wax exoskeleton instead. (You'd think I'd have learned the first time I burned myself with hot wax?) I'm very excited about this project - I just ordered the wax this week! Wish me luck!

January 26, 2012

Here's another quick blog. In my work recently, I've been trying to communicate the idea of common creatures from legends appearing in modern settings. Here's one of my first attempts at this: an infamous raven with ill-gotten goods. I call this piece, Take Out.

January 12, 2012

Today, I thought I'd share a print that I completed last year at about this time. It's title is Crow Mountain (self-explanatory), and it was another experimental print project that combined collage. For some reason that I cannot comprehend, last year I was convinced that I had to hand-paint each of the leaves that I collaged onto the image.

January 5, 2012

Happy New Years everyone! Or perhaps I should say Happy Post-New Years. As promised, here is the exciting conclusion of the bronze pour. For those of you only mildly interested in bronze casting, this is the fun post because it involves molten hot metal!

First, the pit and forge are prepped. The molds are placed in sand and partially burried, both for support and for safety. Due to the amount of dust this raises, you'll notice that I am wearing a respirator.

Next, everyone involved in the metal pour must put on protective clothing. You may have noticed in my last post, the two people carrying the molds were already wearing those shiny silver suits. I technically posted that photo out of order because it seemed to make more sense narratively last week. The pit had to be prepared first, because those molds are so heavy that you don't really want to move them around more than you have to. Anyways, here's a picture of me in a weird suit.

Once everything is ready, it's time to pour the metal into the molds. Two people are required to handle the crucible, one person controls the chain-pulley that raises and lowers the crucible, and the last person is in charge of putting out any fires that might happen. On this pour, I was the firefighter, and I am pleased to report that everything went perfectly and I did not have to extinguish any errant flames.

After the motlen metal solidifies and cools, the molds are broken and the sculpture is now ready for an extremely laborious process of cleaning. The spruing that made the path for the metal to flow through the mold must be cut off and ground away to blend in with the surface of the sculpture. Small cracks that form in the mold will also leave a thin ridge of extra metal, and this too, must be ground down.

However, the final results are stunning, and the resulting sculpture could survive for thousands of years. In fact, my fascination with bronze artifacts, especially Chinese and Japanese ritual bells was on of the reasons I decided to try my hand at the medium.

And voila! The cleaned up bells!

Beautiful and perfect, except for one major flaw. All of my bells ended up solid instead of hollow. A vital step was missed before we poured the molds. Therefore, I have some rethinking to do before I finish these sculptures this upcoming semester. My original plan was to hang them from the ceiling, but that is now impossible because the solid bells are much too heavy.

December 29, 2011

I hope my readers have been enjoying their holidays! I definitely needed to get away from grad school for a little bit to regroup. However, for this post, I'm about to travel back in time to November and share the rest of my experiences with the process of casting bronze.

The last thing I wrote about the process of casting bronze was about spruing - making a structure that will serve as plumbing for the molten bronze to flow through (wow, my recap explanation is so much more concise and clearer to understand). Next, a mold must be created and fired in a kilm for the bronze to flow through.

There are many different methods of doing this. The mold-making method we used was surround the sprued sculptures with a protective wall of chicken wire and tar paper. Next they are plastered to the board that the wax sculpture was sealed too. My boards were too small, so I had to make a mess plastering them to the floor. After the plaster hardens, a special mixture (similar to plaster) is poured into the mold. I don't have any photo graphs of this process, as we needed all available hands to continously keep mixing new batches of mixture and pouring it into the molds.

After the molds set and harden, the tar paper is removed (not the chicken wire though, this is an important structural reinforcement). The molds are then fired in a kilm. Once fired, all of the wax used for the mold will be lost. It is also worth mentioning that the molds for creating even a small bronze sculpture are enourmously heavy.

After the molds have been fired and are cool enough to handle, it's time to pour that bronze! Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion next week!

Oh yeah! And one more announcement: I will be leaving last week's animation up for one more week. So just scroll down to December 22nd's post if you missed it during your Holiday Celebrations.

December 22, 2011

Woo! Ninth Runs Wild is back! Finals and Committee Reviews are over! I am home for the holidays, and giving myself an early Christmas present - NRW is back to posting on Thursdays. No comics as of yet, but I plan on using Christmas to work on comics and to prepare for my second semester of graduate school.

And here's an early holiday present to my readers. This is a very short clip of an animation I am working on as a part of that fine arts video game project I keep talking about. It is very short, but very wintery. Happy Holidays!

(*** The snow animation is now offline. However, once it is complete, I will likely post that version online. ***)

As for fans who are interested in the bronze pour, I will go back to chronicling it next week. I have enoungh material for a couple of more posts, though I will try to wrap things up soon, since it is rapidly becoming yesterday's news.

December 1, 2011

I just thought I should post a quick message on the website for those of you following NRW who aren't on Facebook. The end of the semester has hit me pretty hard, and, although I have many more adventures in bronze to tell you about, I'm going to have to finish my death march to my committee review on December 13th before I can think of doing much along the lines of posting.

November 10, 2011

The process of casting even small scale bronze is long and complex. I imagine many people are at least mildly curious about it, so I am going to start posting pictures of the process for the next couple of weeks.

One of the biggest concepts that I had to get my head around was the process of preparing my wax sculptures for creating the mold that we would pour the molten bronze in. This process is called spruing, and basically what you are doing is creating channels for the liquid metal to flow through so your sculpture gets completly filled in. Here's are some images of my bells sprued and ready for the mold.

In the first image, the cup at the bottom is where the metal will be poured into the mold (so you techically sprue things upside-down), and the branches attached to the bells that attach to the board are exits for extra metal and places for gases to escape. Gases trapped in the mold could form pockets where no metal reaches, so it is important that there be plenty of escape routes for the gases.

One more image for you folks, back when I showed the mold I used to create the generic bell shape (as opposed to building the entire wax bell by hand, which took too long), I never documented the process. The other day I saw some other plaster molds being prepared, so I took a picture:

These are one-piece molds. Basically, if your object is a candidate for a one piece mold (you can take it out of the mold without destroying the object or mold), then you use vises to hold boards together that are taller than your object, seal the cracs with plasticene clay, and then pour the plaster in. Once the plaster hardens, you have your mold.

***Also, you may need to spray or coat your object with a release agent to get it out of the mold. I created my bell forms from damp ceramic clay, and therefore did not have to worry about this. As the clay dried out, it shrank and naturally popped out.

***And if you are making a mold for a small object, then you could probably just use any expendable container to pour the plaster into, provided that you can slide the plaster out of it when finished (release agent needed!) or destroy the container (for instance, if you were using a cardboard box).

If you are still uncertain about what types of objects are candidates for one-piece molds, here's an example of what would not work: I could not create a one-piece mold for the spikey bells - the spikes and the handle would not cause the bell to be unable to slide out of the mold. We call these types of obstructions, undercuts, and these are any ridges or projections that would prevent your object from being able to slide out of the mold.

Any object you use for this pouring method of mold-making would need to have a flat side, or be sealed flat to the surface you are pouring into with plasticene clay.

Now doesn't that make you want to go home and make some molds right now?

October 27, 2011

Happy Halloween! Here's a study I've been doing for my game projects - it has monsters!

October 20, 2011

And this weeks creepy post is... Lemon?

(unaltered photograph!)

That's right, Lemon! At long last, I am sharing a picture of my pet rabbit, who has functioned as my sort of unofficial mascot for years. Teaching computer camp for kids? Need to break the ice with new students? What could be better than to introduce them to the scariest rabbit that ever lived!

For those of you who may already know of Lemon, rest assured that I have kept my students away from this dangerous animal. To the best of my knowledge, no child has ever been traumatized just by the mere digital photograph of the beast. However, for some mysterious reason the opposite reaction occurs. People everywhere love Lemon (although they still think she's scary).

And now for something you'll really enjoy...

************************************update**********************************

The original blog post had Page Twelve of Wave Tyrant posted here, but it has been moved to its proper home, here, along with the black and white version of the page.

****************************************************************************

October 13, 2011

What a perfect date for an October post. This week's image is a detail from a skeletal study that I turned into a collage. Last week's image was also a study from Figure drawing. Now you know why I decided to do a month's worth of Halloween themes.

October 6, 2011

Get ready for a spooky October! In honor of Halloween and the last showing of Pittsbugh's only Zombie Opera: Evenings in Quarantine, created by Liz Rishel (another cousin of mine) and Bonnie Bogovich, NRW will be running a gruesome piece of art every Thursday in October! And congratulations Liz and Bonnie!

September 28, 2011

Here's some follow up pictures of the wax bells that I'm working on. Now that I have some plaster molds of the basic shapes, I'm able to work on a whole bunch at a time.

Here's a picture of the molds with me holding a bell for comparison. Molten wax is pored into the mold and slushed around. As the wax cools and solidifies, it forms a film that can be built up in thickness little by little with more slushing.

The rim of the bell in the picture has already been cut clean, when I first remove it from the mold, the edge is uneven and messy. I now use an oven mitt to prevent the wax from getting on me as I swish it around the mold.

These bells will be used for bronze casting once they are done. I will be using the lost wax techinque, as is obvious since I am working in wax.

September 22, 2011

This week I sliced open the palm of my hand, and burned myself with hot wax, all in the name of creating wax models to immortalize my trademark bells in bronze. What could possibly go wrong once we get to the metal pour?

Here's the photo of some wax models that I'm creating. I'll be using the lost wax technique - something that I will post in detail when we do our first metal pour in sculpture.

I'll also have to take a picture of my plaster molds now that I know how to cast wax without burning myself. The bells in the photo were hand-built, not cast though.

Bells will be playing a big role in the stories that will be told on this website, and my original inspiration for the unusual ones I create came from studying ancient ritual bells from China and Japan - which were created from bronze.

September 15th, 2011

Hello again!

Currently, I'm having the great pleasure of researching sources for my Modern Art Paper. I'm studying James Whistler, an artist who wrote, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and just possibly may have been involved in smuggling arms to Chile.

Here's another image of concept art I did a while back for the Game Project - another pre-gradschool piece. Imagine a Flash game that actually looks like that! This is what Fields by the Sea was getting at!

September 8th, 2011

According to my Facebook poll, there is at least some interest in seeing what I'm doing in the world of art, so here's the first official artist blog entry:

Here's a collage I made in the spring that I used as an example of my work while talking to my acedemic advisor, and the other intermedia student grad. It is now know for a fact that I will be working on a flash game as my big intermedia project this semester. At long last, I can finally hunt my white whale!

Wouldn't you know, I forgot to take a photo of my recent work? Yesterday, I finished two collages for my Independent Study and over the weekend, I made a wax bell for bronze casting.

Oh and there is good news on the horrizon for Wave Tyrant. I found the new painted textures that had been missing for the past two weeks. Now the only other thing holding up coloring is that I need to paint a few more - specifically clothing patterns. Renard's belt is supposed to have a pattern reminenscent of the kimono patterns scene on woodblock prints (although more painterly and abstract). Plus, if you scroll down to the black and white comic, you'll see that I now have an entire villiage to clothe. When I update the comic next, I plan to have a little mini-documentory to explain my process and what I do with all these textures that I create.

September 2nd, 2011

Success! My NRW email is alive and fuctional. Non-Facebook people can email me at kristine@ninthrunswild.com to participate in the poll or send feedback. Also, I really need to thank the people who have already participated in the poll on Facebook. There's at least one person on there that I neither personally know or am related to by blood, so here's an extra thanks to you!

September 1st, 2011

Hello one and all. As many of you know, I have just entered my first semester of graduate school. I spent three years slaving away at my portfolio and they must have really liked it because not only did I get accepted, but I was greatly blessed and fortunate enough to be awarded an assistantship.

What this means is that I am very busy, and since I lost my first apartment due to circumstances beyond my control, I spent the time I had thought to use to build up a cushion in Wave Tyrant finding a new home instead.

I do not want to go on hiatus. I've already had a longer gaps between posts than I had wanted - its been an everything that can go wrong did kind of summer.

So I've come up with a possible solution. I've created a poll on Facebook to see if people would be interested in me posting an artist's blog on Thursdays with occasional comic updates. There will be some pretty interesting things going on - bronze casting, peaks at animation I'll be working on, and other forms of awesome art that I will be working on.

I do not think you even have to have fanned me on Facebook to participate in the poll - you just have to be on Facebook already. For non-Facebook people, I'll be posting the official NRW email address once I verify that it exists.

I'm very interested in feedback right now, so the poll is open and people should be able to add constructive suggestions to it. I will also appreciate email suggestions once that is set up as well.

Thanks,

Kristine