Wings!

Wings, wings, wings have been my life lately.  I don't mind though, because I think they're coming out pretty good.  Here's the latest progress:

Everything finally cut out: 

Trial paint.  This is the hard part.  I want them to be black, like a raven's, but I also want them to be visiable in the dark... hmmmm.  So, I painted them as dark gray as I could and painted the recessed parts black.  Didn't really look all that different and I was afraid to go any lighter with the gray...

Then I tried some highlighting.  The top three came out a lot lighter than I liked, but the bottom three are just about right, so I think that's the method that I'm going to go with.

And here is something for you to laugh at. ;) I wanted to show the size of the wings, but I was making a really goofy face in this picture, so I edited it a little ;)  I'm 5'7.  

So there we have it so far.  I'm still working.  Lots to be done and only 99 days to do it.  I can't believe we're in the double digits already :)

Happy Haunting everyone!!!



Weekend Projects

Apologies for my lack of posting.  Life has just been busy.

Fortunately, this weekend I squeezed in quite a bit of Halloween project goodness!  I was a VERY happy Ghoul ;)


Got a bit of detailed wing carving done.

Painted the Raven Reaper skull...

And as a side project, just for my own pleasure, I sketched out the "fleshy" Master Gracey, from Disney's Haunted Mansion, on canvas.  I want to do one of the "skeletal" Master Gracey also and hang them in my room, but the Count hasn't warmed up to that idea yet.... Maybe once I've actually painted it, he'll change his mind :)

Hoping to get more done in the days to come. 

Happy Haunting!

-The Countess

Reaper Wing Progress

After last weekend's foley after foley, it was a breath of fresh, Autumn air when things went right this weekend :)

The projector is AMAZING*:

I made a copy of my wing sketch and shrunk it down a bit, so that most of the image fit on the projection at one time.  Here, I'm projecting it onto some foam from my bedroom, to the hallway.  I had to put up a plastic table cloth, to block out some of the sunlight from the living room, which helped to really make the image easier to see.

*Now, I'm sure for the more experienced artists, who all ready know about this technique, this projector is small potatoes to what is out there, but for the price I really think that this thing is decent.  It projects color pictures in color... which is exciting.... that in itself opened up the avenue to some other great projects that I've been wanting to tackle.  I'll share those soon enough ;) In anycase, for the home haunt project builder, I feel like this thing is fully sufficient.  The image of what you want projected needs to be shrunk down to 3.5 x 3.5, but that's nothing that a computer/scanner or a copy machine can't do!

Back to the wings!

Then I just moved the projector closer to the foam, till the wings were about the size that I thought I would need them.  Next, I whipped out the measuring tape.  I'm doing the wings in at least 3 layers as of now, so I traced layer 1 and layer two out on the 1/2 sheet of foam that I had left over from last year.  Layer 3 is too big for a half, so I need to get a full sheet to do that one.  Layer one is a little over two fee tall.

The traces were very crude, but it got the general shape and idea across so I traced over them and made some free hand changes.  I also printed out pictures of angel statues, to get ideas about what kind of details I want to eventually add.  Gairy helped  :)

Once I was pleased with the sketches, I brought them out to my new workshop and started cutting them out.  It didn't take very long, with a two nice, new razors.  It did require a lot of patience on my part though, trying to make sure that I didn't break the feather tips as I pulled the wing away from the extra foam. 

Above is layer 1 cut out and placed on top of layer 2, so that I could trace out the exact shape of layer 1.  Confused yet?  Don't worry, it all makes sense in my brain ;)

And finally we have layers 1 and 2.  I cannot wait to cut out 3.  These wings are going to be HUGE!  I'm also excited to work on the detail.  I think that I'm actually going to get to use my dremal tool on them this year.  

I'm hoping to get my hands on a full sheet of foam Friday. 

Stay tuned!

Happy Haunting!

- The Countess