Learning magic

It was a ful and exciting day filled with a room full of eager students wanting to soak up all we could offer. We spent time in a classroom setting, time looking at finished projects and time in the workshop with their hands getting dirty. It was a great time so far.

One of the projects we did as a demo piece for the sstudents was Dug the tiki. Peter was in charge of the deminstration and did a great job. Here's a shot of him doing the carving.

the end result was pretty fun!

Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am I unlock the shop doors for another dy of fun and learning.

-grampa dan

Ready to teach

Today we were in full 'get ready for the workshop mode'. Last minute cleaning and tidying were in progress and in the shop the huge features were pushed outside to make room for the work tables and displays. It looked like a whole new place!

One of the jobs was to set up the name display to welcome our guests. The list of names also included those of our staff that help host the event. The name plaques help everyone remember names. The plaques also show the wide variety of creative solutions possible when presented with a single challenge.

About 3:00 pm the first attendees rolled in eager to start their learning adventure. We are ready to go tomorrow morning bright and early.

-grampa dan

Still drawing

As we go on to new pieces I am still doing a bunch of sketches, mapping out ideas for projects currently in the welding stage. As we get into the build, with the style of the project now settled, some of the early concepts need to be reworked a little. The best way to get the ideas to each of the crew who are working up the piece is a quick sketch.

We are including some carved tiki poles in the golf and in the kid's play area. Initially I did two drawings of the six totems we would be sculpting. The two original concepts were for the kid's play area, designed to be climbed on. 

For the new concepts we decided to do characatures of our gruffles, stylizing them to become tikis. We wanted to use Gruffles not features on other signs. The first to get the treatment was Scurvy.

Dug was a character I loved and it was fun to make him into a tiki pole.

The armature frames are currently being welded and wired. These are going to be very fun to carve and paint up! Stay tuned for fun!

-grampa dan