Back here on the arts side again with an embed regarding how I plan to approach this project as sort of a tutorial. Surface is a 9x17 crate style gift box, plain wood. Came with packaged cheese, crackers, jams and other such mail-order Christmas fare. Painted Marx Toys space tank missing its dozer blade needed something bigger than my 4x4 inch Fun Size.
Project had gotten stalled at this state with Marx tank descending crater to meet up with out of scale painted Marx astronaut from the same playset. Knew we could do better.
Much better.
Now it's an accident scene from one of those shows where guys in foil suits pull wrecked tractor trailers out of the snow. Only it's a spaceship and we're on Ganymede, where it snows frozen methane. My dad loves the shows and terrorizes anyone present with them daily. Plenty of material to work with here, respectfully. But yeah, this is therapy.
Some nomenclature for the box's etymology. All the way from China! Better their trees, I guess ...
The bottom will get a basic treatment of crackle paste moon terrain then sealed over with enough gel medium to be sealed in safely for display on tables or shelves. Though usually I approach the artworks anticipating it will hang on a wall and it seemed kind of weak to just leave the base plain.
I try to think of the box form as nine small panels intersecting at 90 degree angles. Each one should be its own interesting little painting, and all nine should work together no matter what angle they are seen from. When you first approach artwork in person it is rarely face on, and seldom from the Dutch Angle views I use for standalone pix. So it has to at least look intriguing from all sides, if not damn good for something that small.
My standard 4x4 and 5x7 inch sizes. Seemed kind of lame to have the sides just bare or even painted black, so I started letting the insides creep out. Now as much time goes into crafting the sides & bottom as do the main interior panels.
Goal for the sky on what I call The Forgotten Box with color shifts in a whispy haze of Light Interfere Fluid Acrylics. Then glassed over with multiple coats of Clear Tar Gel dried to a visible depth, with the shimmering Micaceous Iron Oxide Fluid Acrylic optically magnified by the curves in the dried gel layer.
So, working this motif sort of backwards: Usually I paint the box and then choose the found pieces to tell some sort of absurd little story. In this case it's starting with the story and a barely begun box, then crafting both to complement the other. The idea will change and evolve, spawning others. There are plenty of broken spaceships to go around ...
GOTCHA
Camera crew ready for more emotive interviews back at the Space Garage.
Accident cleanup crew from "Heavy Rescue 411: Ganymede Station Edition" with foul-tempered Irate Pilot at far right. Imprudent speed in a methane blizzard, could have been a lot lot worse. Everyone needs to learn to just slow down.
Concept for the project best summed up by this trailer clip, Meant to be a space parody of those Weather Channel shows where guys in foil suits pull wrecked trucks out of the snow. My dad is addicted to them, will watch two or more episodes every day ...
In drydock with pristine example of the form. First marketed in the US c.1952 (?) and elsewhere through the end of the decade. I like how these are American made even if extremely fragile, low density plastic that dislikes being dropped onto hard surfaces. Which while an indication of their era (soft "unbreakable" plastics first invented 1954) I've often suspected a clever marketing ploy in selling more units.
Vended originally from counter bins at Woolsworths etc for $.15 cents, two for a quarter. Now highly prized collector's bling, the damaged red ship came that way to me with others as fodder for artworks.
An example of the color scheme I'd employ here on a Marx Toys space dozer tank missing its bulldozer blade, as Corporal Qtzklplzk tries to 'esplain how he locked the keys inside. Sgt. Hallstead barks "Hour walk back to base for the spare set. Enjoy it."
Utilizing Golden's fluid Micaceous Iron Oxide for a grungy oil-caked "Used Universe" look, like she just rolled off a Jawa scrap heap.
Another example using an LP Toys style Checkers Rocket. Minimal and like it's made out of metal.
The full composition, box is about 9x17 which is the largest one of these I've tried so far. Terrain yet to be fully sculpted, and I want debris scattered around the impact site,
Current box paintings being finalized. Found some gallery representation and have a mid July deadline to get a crate of artworks together for an out of town venue. Will show you how it comes together.
And YES! Blogging from Camp Nyland here just outside of Syracuse NY where it is May, it is spring, and we can sit outside without survival gear. Today it's even warm and dry so making the most of it. To the right there are small sculptural forms from an incredible Foundry Workshop at the COMART Facility in 1989 with Roger Mack, Roger Bisbing, I think Clark Stallworth was there too. Just student stuff but I poured bronze for two weeks and it ruled.
On about this one today, begun December 2020 (?) called The Bristol Box, 4x4x3 inches on a plain wood craft box from Amazon. Usually used for potting plants out on the terrace or gluing decorations for a jellybean container. Now finally resolved & ready for hangers.
Inspired by the woodland area home of the Bristol family out there in Fayetteville where we used to visit as kids. Not so much a gated community but a series of modernesque homes set in a ring of woods which had a little drainage pond and creek that always impressed me.
I like letting the painting expand onto the side so the box takes on a kind of objectness. In that sense it's also difficult to display in just a picture or two, so we do blogs.
I presume display on walls so the world should continue onto the underside as well, and I like the trope of a pond or pool spilling over with a little waterway that collects.
Backside left bare for hangars on the top edge. I even sign them now, so this one not quite ready to go just yet.
A new method I stumbled upon when making my skies is to layer a thickness of Clear Tar Gel over the Micaceous Iron Oxide Fluid Acrylic I use for the night sky. Here's a side panel before the CTG treatment.
And after. The glass clear layer acts as a sort of lens and warps the light being bounced off the tiny bits of ground up mica.
The other outer side panel with starfield in plain Micaceous Iron Oxide.
And again after the layering of Clear Tar Gel.
I'd like to go there and just sit for a while.
...
I've come to think of these box artworks as a set of nine tiny paintings which have to both work together and hopefully work on their own as individual gestures. Am proud of this painting, which if memory serves has a 4 x 2.5 inch dimension.
Layering on the Clear Tar Gel, and you can see how it's more or less impossible to get a perfectly flat even coating. It's the little ripples and curves which cause the slight magnifying effect -- Stumbled upon completely by chance!
Ripples and curves in the dried Clear Tar Gel creating a lens effect that varies from patch to patch.
The sky for the main panel here has not yet been treated with the Clear Tar Gel, and you can see how the reflected light off the mica is dazzling the fone's camera.
I love drainage ditches or retention ponds, and want the painting to look like it might be wet or leak on the floor. And suggest a hybrid between painting and ceramics, so that it look like it might have been baked in an oven.
The pool is like 19+ layers of Clear Tar Gel, Glass Bead Gel, Iridescent Fluid Blue and Green, Cobalt Blue Fluid Acrylic, Manganese Blue Hue Fluid Acrylic, more Glass Bead Gel, and more Clear Tar Gel, to create a visibly deep pool that the eye looks into and has a bottom. You could dive into it.
Usually I finish off the artworks with some little figures I painted, maybe a vehicle or space craft they got stuck in the mud etc. I do like how they suggest a sense of scale here, but decided the orange suits did not stand out from the terrain.
Nice shot. That's one that could get re-formatted into a painting via projection, printing, or tracing the outlines. Saved for later reference.
But no. I can't think of why they would be there or what they might be doing. Other than a 420 out in the woods by the pond, and I gotta drive. So ...
Some of the paintings don't get the space bling and I'm proud of that, love how the reflected light dances and shimmers. I'm aware that the format of a box for a painting surface is unconventional, but they served as a metaphor for the cloistered pandemic quarantine under which the method was arrived at.
Someone suggested I apply for a mural project (didn't meet the quals & that's showbiz) and all I could think was "Well, they'd have to get me an enormous box the size of a railway car and some mannequins dressed up in space suits." I've heard of crazier things ...
Stick with me here, you'll like this. (Both blog and video now re-edited for brevity) I want to sieze the moment and bring readers up to speed on current methods. All paints & gels by Golden Artist Colors.
The materials used on this project, begun October 2021 (!!). Now painting on smaller plain wood boxes with an ambition to craft 3d artworks that suggest found object dioramas. I want the painting itself to suggest a hybrid between painting and ceramics, and be more about crafting the materials than painting pictures.
Above are the range of acrylics used for this particular box, which itself was a plain craft shop type box found on Amazon for about $6. Below is a short video which outlines how the use of Clear Tar Gel in particular had a significant hand in how I was able to "finish" the painting off.
Long short is that the artwork got way overworked especially the sky. Poor thing even began to de-laminate in places where the luan layers moistened up.
The space terrain is boss and that patch of dawn peeking through at left was OK. But everything else above those hills was weak and I darn near almost tried sanding it off.
Fasteners go on the back, and my presumption has always been that the work will be shown on a wall at some point so I always let the painting spill over onto the bottom. Which itself is piled over with layers of either the Clear Tar Gel or the Matte Heavy Gel I like to use to help adhere the Crackle Paste to the surface.
I tried putting various toy pieces in to see if they could bring the painting to life, this here my custom painted Marx Toys "Moon Base" series space tank from 1962 missing its bulldozer blade. I always use toy pieces that are damaged, playworn, or inexpensive copies. It re-purposes what would be someone's garbage. But this didn't help: The tank was more successful than the box, which breaks the only rule -- The painting has to be as sweet as whatever goes inside or it's flea market fare.
Cactus piece from a cowboy playset out of Spain, early 1970s? Bonus goodie from a vendor that caught my attention and became thematically attached to this box painting. What else to go with it to tell a little story?
Space Hippies with Kool Kombi Camper, and an early look for the sky. Volkswagen from 2018 by Hot Wheels, figures by Multiple Toymakers c.1969. Accurately describing the interior contents is part of the materials list for me. Collectors of Hot Wheels etc may happen upon an online listing while searching their favorite collectibles. And boom.
This setup did not make the cut but we got pix and those can be printed, and I save archives of all my photo sessions for just that purpose. Good art leads to more art. See anything you like feel welcome to email or leave a comment below.
"Space Tourists Posing for Pix by the Giant Space Cactus out near Ganymede Station" didn't make the cut. Figures by Airfix and Multiple Toymakers, "4xForce" 2019 by Matchbox.
Ganymede Station is a creation of mine as a setting for many of the little narrative space scenarios. Inspired by "Ganymede Beacon" from the 1974 "Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen" adventure. My imagination suggesting that someday humankind will routinely travel our solar system on both research and commercial ventures and Jupiter will likely prove to be a good earner for both. Has like eighty moons some of which have atmospheres, the largest of which is Ganymede. Such a great name.
This almost made the cut - "The Last Pistolero from a Space Spaghetti Western". Larger scale figure made in Hong Kong copied from a classic MPC spaceman pose. Decided he needed a cowboy hat over that helmet or some eight year old was going to call me out on how that doesn't look like a cowboy. He'd be right, so natch that. Will be looking out for a vintage hat that might fit & thinking how to make my own.
I do like this angle, Space Pistolero headed for his showdown with his lunch box. Pix like these can be printed or projected or traced onto paper or canvas etc to be painted over/into and serve as flat artworks, even just as framed prints as is. Can be scaled up as large as the projector, and instantly overcomes my awkward rendering skills in depicting the human form or machines etc, when more precision would produce convincing results.
Trying to go minimal avant gardy here with medicine cups slathered with Micaceos Iron Oxide. Didn't make the cut, but did make me think how much I love glossing over these mica painted medicine cups with Clear Tar Gel, and the optical effect which resulted.
Applying a more or less even layer of Clear Tar Gel to the upside down "sky" inside the box here. Try to even it out and set it aside for 48 hours. The result is a glass clear film over whatever is underneath what appears to be a visible layer of glass. And while it does more or less level itself out while settling to dry, the end result is almost always slightly curved or warped from the naturally curved meniscus layer which forms, acting like a curved lens.
One minute video on the transformation results.
Proud of that now. The colors literally change as the angle of the eye moves relative to the surface. The speckles from the bits of mica also dazzle the eye and seem to shimmer like lights in the night sky.
I like to think of the boxes as nine small paintings all intersecting at right angles to each other. Each discreet panel should both read as it's all tiny painting and contribute to a larger composition involving all nine sides assembled as a box.
So I'm always peering at it from different angles to try and visualize how others will experience its qualities as a 3 dimensional object occupying space. Does that make it a sculpture too? I'll have to check into that.
YES.
I could see that sofa size.
I to use a helicopter crew for the narrative came up the week before when choosing this nice yellow helicopter for a different piece in 4x4x3 inch size. Helicopter a 1970s copy made in China, and the figure on the right is from the Golden Astronaut toy line, 1968.
"Pilot Down Behind The Lines", 4x4x3 inches overall. Finishing touch was the MPC B-52 bomber flying support just like in The Six Million Dollar Man. Pilot rescue scenes are a recurring motif and excuse for always keeping an eye out for more little helicopter toys. The more obsolete looking the better.
"Lunar Module Pilot Down Behind The Lines" is our title this time. Which is absurd, no Lunar Modules ever flew in combat. They were space pickups that landed on the moon so that guys could go off and play golf.
For now the figures & bling get adhered to the surface using a student grade craft hot glue gun for a flexible bond which would be easy enough to work loose without damaging the plastic figures.
See how projecting or tracing etc this image would result in a pretty smooth design for any project requiring guys doing exciting stuff with a helicopter. When painting them in they can be any color or wear any outfit or carry any gear one could think to paint into or over them. About to get busy with some of that part the concept this spring & summer with a refurbed studio basement. Room for a projector and five foot canvas, bring these into the human scale.
There he's making a break for it! I try to avoid choosing figures holding guns, but in this case it works on a thematic level. But yeah, we don't need to see more guns. They bring cameras up to the moon.
While having all this fun I try to keep in mind how viewers would be encountering the results in person i.e. gallery setting, which is nailed to some wall at or around average eye level. Viewers likely won't be crouching down to squint-eye the dutch angles I use for the macro pix. So the objectness of the overall box is just as important as what's inside.
That could also be a good action angle to try painting, with the lunar module pilot like in a blur as he runs for his life. We try to keep the scenes humorous and sly but this is one for those who love action.
Proud of that. Will share up how it finalizes, and my aim for the blog is to have a at least new smallish post every 2nd day. Stop back again soon!
