more little doodles

just a few more doodles.
the first one is a potential sculpture.
the second and third are what seems to be a story growing in my head somewhere.

more soon.

the wild hunt

today i have been doodling.
working towards a piece on a round slab of sandstone i found.
i decided on the wild hunt and wanted to do something simple and cartoony.
from wikipedia-

The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across Northern, Western and Central Europe.[1] The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it.

and i decided on the herne the hunter deer-headed look.

so i did the doodle then the stencil to lay down on the stone so i can work to the pattern easily.
the main figure will be raised up from the stone and the dark figures will be raised too but only have minor detail on them.the background will be dropped back into the slab.
i was kind of thinking how the high-crosses were done when i was doodling so that is why it is so simple. also, i'm thinking of working at speed so simplicity is a necessity.
after all that i played with the hunters left from cutting the stencil a bit and the last pic happened.

more soon.

almost there 2.0

i wanted to make it look more like the old folktale pictures from books i loved as a kid.
so here it is with colour

wandering the wastes

to go with the freeze i doodled a few pics of a snowy wander.
the dude is being kept warm by the bear things massive ears.
kind of a theme, still working on it.
"the northern lights" and "almost there"

a walk with the dog

a winters day walk can get rather chilly.
good for us we have man's best friend.


i'll be making this a bit bigger soon.
i love the tail changing into the scarf.
we shall see where this goes.

more soon.

for a great old one

this is a piece i made for my friends thirtieth birthday.

i wanted to make an idol similar to the scale of the idol from indiana jones.
the decription of the idol found in "call of cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft--

"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally life-like, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it shew with any known type of art belonging to civilisation's youth - or indeed to any other time. Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy. The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present, despite a representation of half the world's expert learning in this field, could form the least notion of even their remotest linguistic kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it. ."

so i decided to make something along those lines.
the idea was that it would be very crudely carved. just a simple form with simple details that would describe enough of the idea. as i was making it i didn't like the way the feet might look and so kept things mega simple. just head and wings and mass of body.
i made a small version in plaster but the plaster looked all wrong so i got a piece of red sandstone and made the thing again.

more at some other time...

stuff i made in the last while, ongoing.

i have been working on the horse sculpture for a few days now. took a break from stone carving and made the head in the top pic.she's not totally finished but i like the look of her. there is a lock of hair falling down over her nose the idea for which came from zee's hair. for some reason the face took on a malaysian or mayan look as i worked it, i put this down to stuff milling around my head from our visit to belize.that's what happens with direct sculpture, you just see where the medium you use leads you from your original idea and how much of the idea stays defined.
i have a few more things to put up but i am waiting until i give them to friends as pressies.
more at some other time.

sketches i made today

i'm making up a few figure sculptures at the mo. the top guy is called "out for a walk". he is just about to walk off of a height which should work better when he's given an appropriate base. he's meant to be coming out of a bushy area. this is only a sketch so far.

the second guy is a re-edit of a scuplture i made ages ago called the commuter. which got destroyed so now i have to make a new one. he's coming along though.

the third one is just a very low relief that i'm tryingto get a process right on. i'm trying for a repeating pattern. this is inspired by ivan mestrovich who did some pretty awesome sculptures in his time. he did some cool relief work that had repeating patterns going far back into the background but they were only done in very low relief. i'll have to keep practicing.

more another day!

here's the new one

From DEE AND ZEE research for the future

From DEE AND ZEE research for the future

From DEE AND ZEE research for the future

From DEE AND ZEE research for the future

From DEE AND ZEE research for the future

this guy is a kind of celtic style monolith but a figure too.
i drew the doodle to see if i liked the idea and it looked good to me.
it kind of draws on the previous bust i made for the simple form with abstract detail.
once i made the form up he ended up looking somewhat like a chinese or japanese figure that my friend has a set of three of. it was entirely sub-conscious although i do like how he looks like an aging wiseman. i like the monumental aspect of him too, he'd be great as a huge rock out in the middle of a field!
i'm digging the simple form with simple design worked into it to delineate what the form is.
i think maybe i put too much on this guy but i like the look of him nonetheless. something to think on for the next one.

a sculpture i'm making

this is a clay maquette that i made today. gonna try to cast and copy this one. it is definitely inspired, in part, by hellboy stylings. i love the sculpture and artefacts from unknown and ancient cultures that populate the hellboy universe.thank you mike mignola and everyone else who has expanded the world of hellboy. it would be cool to one day work on such things for film etc. in the mean-time i shall make them for me. more to come! if you want one or have an idea. let me know! sure i'll try anything!
enjoy!

the ritual

day 12

day 11

day 10

day 9

day 8

day 7

day 6

day 5

day 4

day 3

day 2

a stones throw

this is a document of darren and myself's walk across ireland.
enjoy!

i meant to say

here. if you look to the slideshow on your right and right click and open a new tab/window you get to a whole heap of pics that i just uploaded from the wholetrip.
they are an edit! and they are all from my camera so you can expect more from zees!

enjoy.

got nearly back

yay! no silly underpants inspections or anything! friends collected us from the aiport really early and it was lovely to see them both. thanks so much for taking the hassle out of the morning leg of the trip and giving us a lovely welcome back to this particular continental shelf. it was great hanging out and we tried to break any jetlag/soul delay that may have tried catching us. didn't fully work.
just chilling out in siblings dwellings and generally enjoying their company. hope the can say the same!
the flight itself took hardly any time. not sure if that is true or just because we are used to really long bus journeys and now. watched the movie "where the wild things are" on the plane, one word. DON"T. tried to sleep but only zee got any sleep i think i may have drifted of for a minute or two but the trip seemed so short it didn't even register.
still feeling out of time after afew days. getting a bit more synced with local time.
the trip up to boston went very nicely.
after an emotional goodbye we were off. got good seats and chilled out. listened to music/read/listened to podcasts/slept/watched america drift by outside the window. when we got into boston we had planned to go to lunch in a diner but we ended up going straight to the airport and going through security to get to the stuff beyond security. then wished we hadn't rushed so much when we arrived in a small seating area with a tiny coffe dock. we were not going to stay there for three hours! so we went back out into the main airport. in one of the corridors there we saw nice white rocking chairs and plug sockets looking out over the airstrips. noting it for later we wandered into bookshops and tack-stores and then got a huge burrito each after weighing up the odds of what was good value in the food court. we thought it was funny that after having been in central america we had to go eat more of the same! so after getting food all over the place while trying to not drip our burritos everywhere we went up and installed ourselves into two comfy rocking chairs and watched the sky collect a few planes. ah that's the way airports should be. so needless to say we took to the air ourselves and got our next flight easy too.
fingers tired! as am i!

coming over all CIE

not there but getting there.
we have had a great time in south carolina. folk here have been so welcoming. had a great st. patrick's party where we were the token irish people and had some great chats with great people. met some neighbours who have a lovely lovely garden and chatted to them about life the universe and scifi, as well as making things yourself and recycling stuff to make useful things for yourself. they have also made the cutest most gorgeous little red boat that they can easily lift into the nearby lake. i like it a lot. they are really great people.
while were were here we built a set of raised beds 4ft x 4ft. they only took a few hours to build up and the next day we got earth for them so now they are ready to plant up just in time for planting season.
we tried to catch fish in the lake near every day, to no avail. i think we need to learn a few things.
building the raised beds got me to thinking that myself and zee are like johnny appleseed only maybe deeandzee raisedbed.
off tomorrow to begin the long trek home. should be a fun trip. sorry we did not post more pics on the way and update as much as maybe we could have but that's the way things go sometimes.

sitting in a wafflehouse sunday before st. patrick's day 2010

when we were in Charlotte we tried to put our luggage in a locker at the greyhound station. they don't have any. so, luckily they(the city) has a set of free buses that do two crossing routes through the centre of the city. we were able to get on them and saw the centre of the city anyway. the buses are kitted out to look like old wood trams, very nice. we wandered the city a bit thinking that if we could find a museum or some such we could waste a few hours before the bus to Columbia. that did not work. $20 to a small museum, i think not. so we heard of a place called the epic centre up where we had started our city wanderings. it had a cinema. we decided to go see "Alice in wonderland". they were very nice and let us put our bags behind the counter. so having just over 1/2 an hour before the show we went next door and had very nice burgers at "just five guys" and then went to the cinema. the setup for the cinema reminded me a fair bit of a shrunken version of the UGC in Bruxelles. it seemed rather classy and we had a pair of chairs that was in fact a couch. comfy seats! while watching Alice i was near overcome with pangs of mortality by something the hatter said to Alice. it is so strange to think of death and your own death. if anything rather than make me nihilistic or religious(though that does rear it's head) it makes me hopeful that i shall try to dd to humanity in a small way, maybe become a starting point or a cog in a grand design for something grand like an actual long term plan that helps uplift humanity.

a whole month!

well we have just been not writing up anything.
lets see. not much to tell really.
but we went to the beach and had a glorious few days. you never know how much you miss the sea until you see it again. had a pair of prescription goggles. very useful. saw fishies in the seaweed and chased them a little. had great icecream made by an italian couple in placencia. saw a whole heap of pelican just chilling out around the place. and while we ate lunch one of the days we saw two kids climbing a tree to get what looked like unripe fruit so after we finished eating and they were gone we went and got a ripe one we could see. having never seen a guava before i was puzzled. yet having just drank guava juice i was able to smell what the fruit was so i hid it from zee as she loves guavas. a few seconds of childish running saying "i'm not telling!" and i relented. we ate it as we scooted along the edge of the carribeen sea and looked at young conches as they sluggishly walked along the sea-floor.
the day we got there we went for a long walk up the beach and went as far as the final point of land you can see on placencia's beach. loads of early morning swims and late night swims(is that a shark!) finally got lobstered up, though i have to wonder why folk spend a whole holiday making up for lost time by staying on the beach all day. we only needed about an hour and we really only did that twice. wandered the whole town. we were staying in a place called carol's cabanas. it was nice and simple. cooker fridge bathroom breakfast area bedroom and veranda(with mozzie shielding set to maximum). all we needed.

the trip back up was fun. we had a fair amount of time to waste and so went to get icecream before going to the ferry and when we reached the ferry it was pulling back in to collect someone who had just missed it. strolled on and on the other side we speedwalked up to the bus station(it takes about ten minutes) and the bus was just arriving. got a seat on the bus easily. down the back. then a nice mexican gentleman with bristling tattoos told us it was his seat. figuring that i liked earth i just said grand and we moved to seats opposite him. and then on came a guy selling "lemon juice. tamarind juice!" zee said "lemon please!". oh. wait. "i have no lemon juice". and another guy sold us mango slices(unripe) with cayenne pepper and sugar. it was lovely. listening to our mp3 players on the way up to block out the horrendous radio station trying to crawl into our heads. i was bumping along to the balfa brothers. a very cool creole band from cajan country and they have some great tunes i tell ya. every big stop a few guys would get on and give us the option of buying a bit of food to tide us over. and a girl got on just over halfway with loads of fresh "cinnamon bons" and as she worked her way down the bus we hummed and hawed not knowing what she was selling. the second zee heard her say "cinnamon" money was near thrown from zee's hand. "you cannot resist the power of the bark-side luke".
i tell ya, the bus was better serviced than any in ireland. granted, it may not look all flashy but the seats are comfortable enough and the food we were offered was a hundred times nicer and nobody felt like they were being screwed over for a sandwich. and they will drop you off wherever it is you need to be dropped off during the route.

so back in the homestead. eating green beans that were planted about a month into us arriving and looking at the land.
finally got around to lighting a fire today for some cashew nuts. i did not know they were so much work! if you get the raw juice from the fruit around the nut onto you it will burn,like acid! so you fire roast the nuts and shuck them after they are dry, i now appreciate how much effort goes into making just one nut edible. as well as roasting the nuts we fired a few of the random pieces of claywork we made a while back. now while the clay cracked while it was drying we figured it would be a good way to see if the clay fired well. so now we have a few nice looking fragments that are vitrified and so we know the clay works as does the simple way of just heating them up and putting them in the fire embers.
i made a small sculpture just there too. using the local rock. couldn't really tell what rock it was. it was all dusty and yellow and dirty. on cleaning it however i found out that it was a lovely rosy marble! come to think of it, i have seen pieces in museums made from just this stuff and from this part of the world too. and also while sanding and filing it smooth i had an idea that you could use vinegar to smooth the stone down a bit. i dont' know where this idea sprang from but i have vague recollections of hearing the idea somewhere before. so when i was near finished out came the brush and a bowl of vinegar. it worked! now the piece is super smooth and nicely polished.the vinegar burnt away the gritty parts and gave the whole piece a uniform finish. it is only small but it looks lovely. i wanted the piece to look like it might still be a pebble and i think it worked very nicely. now i am making a slightly bigger piece and carefully chipping away small pieces so as not to crack the whole thing down the middle.

so that's the lot. there is more in between the month but that's all the interesting stuff i think. more soon enough, i promise.

I have a new surname

went to San Ignacio today to go see a dentist for my tooth. after missing the turn-off for the bus stop we discovered that the bridge the bus usually goes over is being rebuilt. possibly due to the recent rain but more likely due to the same way that roadworks are done in Ireland to insure new grants for the coming fiscal year. anyway, we walked back up from San Ignacio over the high bridge that brings us back to Santa Helena where we wanted to be.. turning down a road that would sync us up with the map zees dad had drawn we were halfway down the road when we saw the dentist. in we went. not a long wait. and then i was away jabbering to the dentist whose names is Mercedes. she had a very down to earth manner and steady hands. so i can have the tooth pulled or have aroot canal. she recommends root canal. it seems to make sense from several angles to me. one. it means i still have a chomper. two. it cost around 700 belizean dollars. which is about 250 euro. and we're away. down into the 'oh dear, is that nasty pointy-thing meant to fix my tooth' position.
she says- I'm gonna do this without anesthetic cos the tooth is already dead.
i say- i may scream.
we go on. no problems no pain. she scrapes my roots out and pads the area with a medicated desiccant of some sort that will dry up the puss-bag that has developed in my jaw. caps it of for the week with a little filling and sends me on my way. back next week. she wants to see that i heal properly so two more visits but only one for actual tooth work. the one after that is to check to see that my fistula(a small canal i installed myself running from the abscess to my gum) has healed up and no more infection is in evidence. no problem. and as it is Saturday it is also market day so it makes things easy moving back and forth between towns.
did i mention the bus is just regular if not more so than the dublin buses? definitely more interesting but just as regular. i also may have forgot to tell you about the bus that nearly squished us in the terminal(near feckin fatal!) in Belmopan. well we were waiting behind the locked gate they have just installed that stops people from congregating outside near where the bus parks. and yay! here comes our bus! oh wait it isn't slowing down. and that driver looks very worried. come to think of it i can see the whites of his eyes. swerve, bounce on The kerb, hop over it, crash through metal fence on kerb, crush bike, slam into wall and brake. nobody was hurt but someone was very upset about their new bike. well at least the new gates that stopped people from standing where the bike was worked. nobody hurt paralysed or dead.
i have to say that the buses here are very robust. i think the wall was more hurt than the bus was.
and onto the next bus.


oh and as for the dentists. in a very funny cultural misinterpretation i now have a new Mayan-friendly surname.
Synetl.

i like it.

It has the makings of a hot day

Because we are staying close enough to a highway, bus traffic wakes a person up fairly early here, not that its a bad thing, it means that you can get stuff done while it is still cool provided one is not too lazy to get up. Most mornings I am too lazy to get up as dawn is breaking, but not this morning. I was up at dawn with the intention of spotting some of the local mammals called gibnuts, they are rodent-things, not entirely sure seeing as I have never seen one, I just hear tell of them existing, they are seemingly quite shy and they put in an appearance close to the river at dusk and dawn only. Oh well, one of these days. The only other wild mammal that I have seen here is a squirrel, with a dark fluffy tail, Dee has seen what is thought to be a possum, the lucky beggar, he saw a snake too the other day, put the frighteners on him, poor beggar. Anyway, I think it precipitated somewhat last night, now its all misty, and 29 Celcius, all that means that it is going to be a scorcher of a day, and we are off the the dentist for Dee a bit later this morning. Anyway, its seven in the morning and its by time I started the day. Blessings, Z

If I was Hannibal

today we were out most of the glorious glorious day. not sweltering but nice fluffy clouds passing by at a good speed. we had meant to meet uncle bobby off the cruise ship today but i messed it all up by thinking it was Friday not Thursday i was meant to meet him. so what did we do Friday?
well we went and worked on getting the land ready for a set of terraces on the slope down to the river. we had started the other week but it is mellow here. work when you can and when you feel like it. the terraces are a project that will some day get done.
so on this lovely day me zee and David went out and chopped the bay cedar trees down to use as a guide for the earth in the terraces.zee was making little stakes from the logs we chopped down and i am feeling mighty! due to chopping trees with a machete most of the day. i never liked those trees, always staring at me funny...
well near lunchtime i went to drink some water and needed to rest for a few minutes. it is okay while you are moving but the heat was trying to get me when i stopped being busy. i drank plenty of water!
well after a great lunch made by zee out we went again. chopped two trees and started processing the wood to more thick branches for staking leaving them to the side for zee to process into the right length. so as i continued with the tree slaughtering zee was making great progress putting the stakes in place for the terrace wall. nearly have one frame for the first terrace in place.

so at the end of the day, supping on a coke rather than a fine cigar,

I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER.

today i saw a toucan or two

it was really cool. we saw them the other day but today they were eating bananas from the tree near the shop so i was able to get close to them and they were to interested in the bananas to be bothered with me. so i was able to get within six feet of them! they were the half-pint toucans not the guinness toucans scale. they are around here somewhere too but to see such a strange bird up close is great. they have such lovely colours on them and their beaks have strange patterns on.

as well as that. as i said before i was processing some white clay i dug up. so i came to thinking i needed a few tools for working the clay.
after making a few nice wood tools yesterday i got to thinking. maybe some nice metal ones to work on the finer details? so about two hours later- i now have three double-ended metal modelling tools the likes of which i would pay twenty euro each for in ireland.
all i needed was a bit of small gauge rebar, a hammer, an anvil, a bench grinder, a few cloth backed sandpaper shards and a bit of stick to bend the finer tool heads around.
now i can get to work.

happy new year everyone!!! missing you loads! hope that all your dreams come true this year!