“Friends in High Places” just seemed to be a more fitting name for the carving. I added a few dog toys for interest and then glued everything together. I’m still thinking about adding one or two pigeons and a nameplate for sure.
I’m really happy with this carving.
I think that I have the most fun with adding the little details to the carving. I’m just starting to epoxy the pieces together so I want to make sure that I add the smaller details before things are permanently in place and more difficult to reach easily.
The first thing I did before epoxying “Wendell’s” feet to the apartment ledge was to add shoelaces. The laces are just black 16 gauge wire that you can buy at any hardware store. With an awl, I poked some shoe lace holes into the shoes and made small “u” shaped pieces of wire and glued them in place with a little bit of CA glue ( “crazy glue” ). Left as black wire, they look great and look even better with one shoe tied ( just a loop on the wire ) and the other shoe untied.
I like the way that this turned out with the shoe lace dragging on the ledge. The other side of the shoe has the lace hanging down below the ledge.
The “tied” shoe lace is actually two separate loops of wire with a single larger hole in the centre of the lace where I glued both halves to the shoe.
So, how do you decorate a 1930’s era apartment? Well, I went with a wallpaper look above and below the chair rail.
First, I painted the background a peach colour. Below the chair rail, I tried something a bit different with stripes. Some years ago when I painted our dining room, I was talking with a professional painter and he was suggesting that I create a striped pattern by first painting the wall and then masking off stripes and painting the exposed surface with a urethane gloss. I thought this was a bit odd, but he had done this in several homes and really liked the effect. Although I didn’t follow his advice for our dining room, I did try this on the interior of this apartment.
After evenly spacing some trimmed masking tape, I brushed on a matte urethane because I was afraid that a gloss would be too shiny. As is often the case when you apply urethane to an acrylic, the colour darkened and “richened.” The result is quite nice.
Above the chair rail, I used a wallpaper pattern that I found on the web. I just printed it off to the scale that I was looking to get and cut through the pattern with the point of a sharp blade. With that stencil, now, I was able to dry brush some burgundy colour through the stencil and onto the upper wall in a repeating pattern.
The overall look came out just right, I think. Notice that I added some brown staining here and there to set it off.
You can look back at an earlier posting of when I created the brickwork and the stonework for this carving…just look under “Themes” for “Missed A Spot” and scroll back to see the original wood version of what follows.
The painting was fun. I started with the stonework by initially carving in a stylized “S” onto the two keystones. I found a nice font on the web, flipped the image vertically and then printed it off on an ink-jet printer. With the letter now printed backwards, it was a simple matter to rub the back surface and leave a faint image directly on the wood. A sharp knife and a bit of wood burning then created the image into the wood. I suppose we could argue that the “S” is like the Sheraton chain, but I’m going with Sheridan.
The stone ledges and headers were initially painted a light grey and then were covered with multiple “washes” of a sand coloured beige, yellow ochre and light grey. I then finished them up with some age related “stains” of yellow ochre, burnt sienna and asphaltum in the corners and “dripping” down the edges.
The mortar between the bricks was painted first with a light grey. I then dabbed more than brushed on a brown/red combination followed by some grey and yellow ochre. The dabbing was effective in giving the bricks a mottled look…I was careful to dab the colours randomly.
Now the kicker: I remembered using an antiquing stain back ( way back ) when Peggy and I dabbled in ceramic painting. I’m not sure how to describe this but I’m sure that it still can be purchased at ceramic shops or hobby shops. It’s black, looks similar to a wood gel-type stain and has a slight solvent smell. With a bit on the end of an artists brush, I dabbed an area of several bricks with this black stain and then wiped it off with a paper towel. I used the same stain on the stonework, but in that case I painted the complete stone and then wiped off the stain.
Here are some pictures that show the “before” with just the acrylic paints and the “after” with the stain applied. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out and I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks with the urethane finish coat.
Before…
After…
And here’s how the whole thing is looking so far…
The braided rug where the three little dogs will sit came together pretty nicely.
It’s nothing more than a thin layer of basswood, maybe 3/16″, in which I made some spiral cuts with both a v-tool and followed up with a burning tool tip to clean things up a bit. The individual braided part was created using a burning tool tip. I guess you’d call it a herringbone pattern and it’s pretty simple to do but it takes a bit of time. If you make a rug like this, just remember to give yourself enough room between spirals as you’ll need the room for the burned-in pattern.
Once that was done, I used three alternating colours to paint the patterns. You don’t have to actually switch between colours…just paint one “braid” or block, skip two and then paint the next braid until you’re finished with that colour. The other two colours will follow the same pattern and eventually fill in all of the braids.
I actually used a three colour combination of blues, greens and reds. Just pick a dark, medium and light colour in each of the blue, green and red combinations and start painting. Water down your acrylic paint and you’ll find that the paint flows nicely over the braid that you’re painting and the burned line keeps it from flowing beyond that braid.
The final touch was to do some dry brushing with a light beige colour just to pick up the high points and add a little more interest. So, this was just using a fanning motion lightly over the carving with a large brush loaded with little and almost dry paint. I think that without the dry brushing, the rug would look a little too new and a bit plastic looking. I’ll add a urethane finish for the final touch a bit later.
I’m afraid that I’m old enough to remember twisting the valve on the hot water radiator in order to get some heat into my apartment. Although I could have carved the radiator from memory, I referred to a few pictures before I started.
The radiator started as a rectangular block of basswood. I scored the block with about 3/16″ deep saw cuts all around just using a handsaw and later I rounded the block on the top and bottom. This created the various segments to the radiator.
Following that, I rounded the front and back of each individual segment leaving a high point in the centre of each. With some scrap basswood, I made a couple of legs with claw style feet and glued them in place. Also with scrap basswood, I carved some pipes with a valve on one of the pipes. The valve handle is just a couple of washers glued to a brass nail.
I wanted to make the radiator look like it was made from brass that had tarnished over time, so I mixed a couple of colours… Copper Penny and Burnt Umber…and covered everything except the pipes. I then took the Copper Penny colour and dry brushed over the whole thing so the the high points would look more brass like and less tarnished. The pipes were just painted a beige colour with a little rusty brown around the joints.
I had completed a little valence for the window some time ago and painted it up and added some brass nails in the “upholstered” diamond panels. The two pieces look pretty good together.
Well, I guess that I’m on a bit of a roll having not done anything creative for some time. It’s actually Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, so I’m painting in between eating too much turkey and goodies…and napping…eating turkey makes you tired ( at least that’s the story that I’m going with ).
Here are the three little dogs in their new colours. Once the acrylic paint is cured a bit more, I’ll add a final urethane coating for sealing things up.
Here’s how they’ll look when they’re all together inspecting Wendell’s cleaning efforts. I should mention that the first little dog that Peggy and I had was a white Westie just like the one I’ve carved…his name was Angus MacGregor. Angus once had an altercation with a skunk and after I bathed him in tomato juice to get rid of the smell, he was pink for several months.
Well, the furnace came on this morning so I’d say that summer is over. But that’s not all bad as it means a return to the workshop on a more consistent basis.
So, this past couple of weeks has seen me back at the painting of Wendell the window-washer. Here’s how things are looking with the usual acrylic paint “washes” followed by some dry-brushing. The colours used included linen, asphaltum, raw umber, yellow ochre, flesh tone with a little extra pink and brown added, midnight blue, payne’s grey and light grey.
I apologize for not keeping you better informed of my progress. Spring is a busy time around here!
I had some fun in carving the rag that the window cleaner is using. I should mention that the little fellow has adopted the name of Wendell. He looks like Mervin from Mervin-the-Mover fame and we suspect that they’re probably brothers.
The cloth rag was carved so that Wendell’s fingers and thumb would be covered somewhat by it. I did this by etching the hand with artist’s lead and then letting that lead imprint the wood that needed to be removed.
I also sanded smooth the surface of the rag to match where the plane of the window would be.
After adding a number of folds in the cloth and some deeper grooves in the side that would be wiping the window, I painted a gingham cloth pattern that would emphasize the various directions of the cloth and where it would be stretched and crushed. Finally, I applied a good amount of epoxy on the wiping surface and pressed it up against a piece of glass that I had waxed. The waxed surface allowed me to break away the cloth from the glass leaving a fairly smooth surface. Then with a bit of fine sanding ( 600 grit ) and some polishing ( 1200 grit ) I applied urethane to give the epoxy a gloss like it was wet and sudsy against the glass that was being cleaned. Turned out pretty well, I think.
Next, it was time to tackle the bucket Wendell would hold. It was pretty straight forward carving the bucket…I added a few “dents” and some raised ribbing along the top, bottom and side seam. I used some copper to make two small posts for the handle to attach. The handle was a drilled out piece of basswood and the “ropes” are twined light wire.
It really started looking like an old bucket when I applied adhesive backed aluminum tape. Once the tape was on and burnished in place, I used a centre punch to make small rivets along the ribbing.
With some epoxy that I intentionally “foamed” by constant stirring, I added a thick layer of “suds” into the shallow depression that I had carved in the top of the bucket. Once it was cured, I drilled out a hole to place a carved “squeegee.”
Then came the fun part. I used payne’s grey as a wash over the entire aluminum surface to give it some age, added some yellow ochre, a rusty brown and some raw sienna to make it look worn and dirty. After I painted Wendell’s logo, I used a razor knife to scratch away some of the paint to make it look like it had chipped and worn over time. Lots of fun.
I’ve added in a few items since my last blog entry. The first is an old-style hot water radiator. I thought that might look good perched under the window and add to the 1930’s style that I’m looking to create. The second item involves more dogs…
I thought that it would be nice to have several dogs with their heads tilted up and to the side watching the antics of the window-washer. We had a little West Highland Terrier, or Westie, in the past ( named Angus MacGregor ) and I thought that he’d make a nice addition to the scene.
They’re a pretty boxy little dog, so it was fairly straight forward in cutting a shape out on the bandsaw and then roughing it in with a Typhoon bit on a Foredom handpiece. I used the same method from the last dog by cutting along the neckline and then making and gluing in place a wedge of basswood that tilted the head up and to the side.
Most of the detailing was done with the same small gouge that I used to make the coat of the previous dog, however, I made a few passes with a small v-tool and later with a burning tool as well to create some very fine lines that would make the coat look a bit more wirey…similar to a Westie’s coat. Westies are white unless you bathe them in tomato juice to remove the scent of a skunk ( a memorable episode with Angus ).
You know, this little dog ended up looking so nice that I thought the last dog looked poor in comparison. It seemed to me that the head was just too small for a caricature…so, off it came and I glued on another block of wood and started again. And, then, just to add to the scene, I created a very small chihuahua. I think that rounds things out for now.
tributesinwood 