It was another crazy busy day in the shop. The painting crew was working on the final base coats of a host of small features. Tomorrow they begin the glazing process to wrap those up. I enclose one pic of the treasure chest in the dirt bank. It is looking pretty cool.

In the center of the shop Peter was busy all day welding up the upper vines on the massive beam that will be hoisted up over the entrance gates. Elsewhere, the two towers were in progress by Matt and Jack.

I spent the day sculpting Twister, another of the Gruffles who is the feature creature on the Yardarm Twist sign. He is sitting in a bosun's chair, swinging from the yardarm of course. This is the concept art we started with.

An armature frame was welded, the lath was tied on and then Sarah and Brent mixed copious amounts of sculpting epoxy while I did my best to stay ahead with the sculpting of the figure. First I covered the mesh with a thin layer to stableize the sculpt and then built up the thickness, padding it with crumpled tinfoil to bulk out the dimensions as needed. I decided to to start with Twister's eyes and mouth, then do the hands and feet. His furry body and facial hair will be tomorrow's job.

The banner and lettering on it will be hand sculpted in epoxy like the figure. The mast, yardarm and sail wil be sculpted in fiberglass reinforced concrete. Tomorrow we should hoefully be able to make good progress on this piece. Stay tuned...