The little touches that tell the story

The design of a piece is critical. Picking the right colours and adding glazes can add a whole lot as well. But often it's the teeniest little touches that bring a piece to life. Those same small touches add a great deal to the story. Yesterday I posted a short video of the 'MARVELOUS MACHINE' in motion. It was pretty cool to see it in action. Today I spent only  few minutes on the piece but the time I spent made a big difference. I first painted the brass colour on the top plaque. It took two coats of the metallic gold. I then aged things down with the same glaze I used yesterday on the larger piece. While that dried I added a teeny bit of rust to one side of the base. Then I dry brushed on the smallest bit of dark metallic grey to the rotor and stand - where one would expect some wear. Then an even smaller amount of silver was added to the same areas. Then a couple of brush strokes of bright gold added wear to the brass plaque. A little more aging toned things back down.

Those few minutes with a brush and various colours of paint changed the piece dramatically. It brought it to life and added a whole lot of story. This little dynamo not wells the story of many decades of sevice.

Motion!

At every opportunity I do a little more work on the 'MARVELOUS MACHINE' It is slowly coming together. Today, I finished the assembly and basic painting of the dynamo and mounted it to the machine. It's fun to see the gears turn in unison and the machine moves at last. I've decided the bulk of the machine will be burgundy. 

Julio is golden

Over the last three days Julio did a little of just about everything we do in our shop. He welded, wired, mixed and troweled concrete, carved, sculpted, painted, glazed and gilded. He asked a hundreds of questions and got hundreds of answers in return. Our time together was much like a workshop and as anyone who has attended one of those, the time was plugged full of hands-on learning. Through our time we also became much better friends and I look forward to spending more time together in the future. Thank you Julio for taking the time from your busy schedule to visit us!