The third sign honouring the owners of NEB’s Fun World is now fully sculpted and ready for paint. I had fun creating the twisted bean vine that winds its way over the top of the sign. The step inside the vine is structural and helps support the sign from the bracket. The twenty-four leaves are plasma-cut 16-gage steel and were welded to the steel armature before the sculpting epoxy was applied. It is going to be spectacular in colour!
Getting a head start!
As always, there are currently multiple projects underway in the shop. With our crew split between the Hazelnut Inn and the shop, the three welders are concentrating on the structures for NEB’s Fun World. We aim to get as many armatures as possible ready before everyone returns to do the sculpting and painting. My time is spent planning upcoming projects, managing the ongoing fabrication and working on the dimensional signs so the painters of work when they return have no shortage of projects to finish. Stay tuned for much more…
Working our way to the bottom
We’ve been busy painting inside the North Star suite for more than a month, with another three weeks left to go. Many wonder why it takes so long and the answer is this is no ordinary paint job. It isn’t a simple matter of pouring some paint into a tray and rolling it onto a flat wall. Here, the base colours are bushed by hand into every nook and cranny, three times over. Then multiple colour glazes are brushed on and then judiciously wiped off. Then comes some dry brushing to add highlights. Once we are happy with the colours and blends we go over things a couple more times to age and ‘weight’ them, tying every element of the room together. Being that the magical room is six hundred square feet and almost three times as tall in places as a typical room it adds up to a whole lot of time to create the finished result. The upper areas are now finished and the lower areas are ready for glazes. The big scaffolds will hopefully be removed by the end of the week. Stay tuned for a total reveal soon…
