village show art

Every year our friends run a local village show, and normally we enter a few photos and drawings in the hope of winning the art cup, which, to be fair we do win quite often :-) (well sue my partner  normally wins it) This year with two days to go to the show I started my painting. We like leaving these things to the last moment.

I have had some success with bankys style pictures, two years ago my cowboy riding an

ATAT picked up a 1st or 2nd.

The picture above is painted on the back of a piece of perspex, unfortunately,

this year I forgot to take my painting.

On the day before the show i did the pencil drawing entry, 

This was drawn from photos we had taken at Warwick castle last week. 

This one picked up a second place which with a couple of results with photos meant I got to bring the trophy home ! Whooow!!

Cardboard castles

After the success of the Houses as the backdrop to the kids school play we were approached by the year six teacher to see if we could knock her up a quick castle for their rendition of the robin hood story, the final school event of the year, and the last thing the year six kids take part in before going off to new schools.

Sue couldn't refuse so with a couple of weeks to get something done I started collecting the cardboard!

Working out how to make it all free standing.

The tops of the turrets

A slightly simplified Nottingham forest.

The finished paint job on the forest

Sue helping to put the last details on the castle. It stands about 7ft tall and is something like 12ft across. Its only loosely bolted together in the picture. 

And for the first time I managed to make something that folded up and went in the back of my car (a VW Polo) So it actually made getting it to school a piece of cake. 

I'm looking forward to hearing what the kids think of it later today. :-)

Cardboard houses

A few pictures of the two "buildings" made for the schools version of the ginormous turnip, all the buildings were made using some fantastic 3ply card we have our injection moulding plastic delivered in at work. The  card is fantastic, as strong as hardboard but much easier to cut. 

the roof is much thinner and was givn a few coats of paint to help it look suitably wobbly and rough.

Between the houses is Seth in his dog costume. I made the head and my wife the body suit/gloves and feet.

The turnip house, made in two pieces as everything had to fit in the back of our car.

Beach buggy tot rod rebuild

Its been a while since I have posted but that's not to say I haven't been busy, In the last few weeks I have rebuilt the buggy and built two houses for number one son's school assembly. The houses and a fence were for a production of the ginormous turnip, for which they needed a tumbledown cottage and a turnip house along with a length of fence. The same weekend the school held a summer fayre, for which I had foolishly offered the buggy as an attraction. It was a long way from being ready to use, so in the last two weeks I have welded the chassis, painted all the steel, added chrome bumper cages front and back, made and upholstered the interior panels and seats, painted the wheels and built a pretend engine(which annoyingly didn't fit at the 11th hour!)

We made it to the show and it was a real hit, not sure who much we made yet but I had over £50 in my bucket including the float so a reasonable 2h work. :-)

above, on the morning of the show, fitting the wheels.

.

My space on the field with my cottage as a backdrop

OFF ROAD!!! :-)

One of the 80's "Love Is Cards"?

It really could have been built to fit in the back of the car, there is an inch to spare in every direction.

The finished costume!

We'll i should really cover his sword with foil but as he under strict instruction to not take it out of his scabbard I probably don't have to. The Dress up day (For national book day) (Seth was Mark Anthony, his school limited it to Shakespeare costumes) was a big success and both Seth and molly (Who went as Ophilela) went down a storm.   

The belt and "Skirt" are probably the bit that is the closest to being real armor, using the brass discs gave it a  nice weight.

The Scabbard was made from card covered in more sofa remnants.  

Only one post to go. 

 Seth's Roman Helmet, a combination of fomex card and body filler. Amazingly he kept this on pretty much all day. (the blood washed off in the rain :-))

 The Bristles are obviously a cheap broom cut into pieces and glued into the channel across the top.

 All of the straps are from our ever giving sofa! and the studs are upholstery nails. 

There is a little bit of black and green paint to age the "metal" slightly. 

Roman costume part 2 (or three, possibly)

As its march and pretty cold, sandals were felt to be out of the question so I decided to make some roman feet. complete with sandals. A large lump of foam rescued from an old sofa was carved and sanded to shape before being painted, having toenails stuck on and a nice brown leather shoe made (More sofa scraps!)

These are currently Seth's least favorite bit of the costume :-)
karl

Roman centurion / Mark Anthony costume

We'll the roman costume using the brass discs ws a complete disaster, it made the shirt ridiculously heavy (especially for a 5year old!)
So undeterred I found a number of old signs at work which were printed on fomex and set about making a new costume for Seth using the fomex to replicate the steel.

A good coating of gold paint covered the old sign content, and photographs really well!

(The shirt is nothing to do with the costume)

Still lots more to do to this, more straps and a little ageing to stop it looking too new. 

More tomorrow.

Ok, new year new project! The kids have a Shakespeare day coming up in march, where they are encouraged to go to school dressed as their favorite character. Seth with almost no prompting from me, has decided he wants to go as Mark Anthony (from Anthony and Cleopatra). This is handy as while skip diving at work I had come across hundreds (possibly thousands) of piezo discs, which as everyone knows, are thin discs of brass which when a current is applied vibrate to produce a sound. But ignoring that feature they look just like roman scale Armour, as worn by the higher ranking officers. Perfect. :-)

 

These are a few of the discs, using an old hole punch I can make a neat hole in each one for assembly.

Here is a section laid out to get an idea of how it will look, the answer is fantastic!

Probably wont use it but I'm also looking at the lower ranking paneled roman Armour (there is a possibility that the brass Armour may be a little heavy! )

More soon...