Carving Starry Night

 

So this Halloween i decided to tackle Van Gogh's Starry Night. To do this I have some wood carving tools I picked up at Michael's craft store. Clay tools really aren't sharp enough. i also have a couple small loops for carving out.

I printed off the picture. To conserve ink I just printed it under the "draft" setting. Didn't need a really nice print, just to get the idea. I used a regular ball tip pen to transfer it to the pumpkin. I did this freehand. You can make a couple pricks through the print to get a few points for size reference.

To start carving i clipped my print to a board so I could have it to look at as I went. After gutting the pumpkin and thinning the walls I got one of the tap lights that are battery powered and put it inside. I put the light in a sandwich bag 1st so it didn't get pumpkin on it. I liked the light so much that we ended up using it instead of candles when we were done.

To get the walls a uniform thickness i have a needle probe in my set and poked it through teh wall in several spots to cofirm that it was all the same thickness. I scraped it to about 1/2 - 3/4 inch thickness.

 

 I used a small curved blade for most of the pumpkin. To get the crisp outlines I partially cut into the skin following the lines I made than used a flat chisel blade and cut towards the outline cuts and chipped out small bits to create the outlines.

Slowly carve in layers! You can't un-carve. I worked away at he moon with large and small curved blades. I used a hole punch for the stars (you can see the tools in the background... and the pumpkin all over me!)

 Pumpkins like this are in revese. The deeper you go the brighter the spots get. I used the edge of the angled chisel to scrape the deepest lines by the mountain and moon. the Moon is nearly cut through on the outer edge and I did cut through around the points and circle

For the buildings I poked in straight with a flat chisel than cut towards my 1st cut to chip out the flesh.

 This angle shows the moon well.

 When I'm done I wash the pumpkin inside and out to get any hanging bits. this really does make a huge difference in how clean the lines of a pumpkin look! i than went and checked for any areas that needed touch ups.

This was only the 2nd time I have done a shadow pumpkin. I really am happy with this. I think I could have had more depth around the stars, but this is pretty good!

Thse are pumpkins that my kids did.

My daughter Anja's pumpkin

 My youngest son, Michael's pumpkin. he will be 9 in January and he cut this by himself!

You can see the tap light in this one. They really do work great!

 And my older son, Robert's pumpkin.

Art Prize 2012

I took the kids down to Art Prize yesterday and here are some of the amazing art that is scattered around our awesome city! I think Art Prize is the best thing our city has come up with. It's the largest art competition in the world.

you can enlarge these images for a closer look.

this one is made of old tires

 I'm sorry, I don't know why these images are loading sideways. I switched them to up and down before uploading them and Google want's to load them sideways when I upload them to the blog. But I think these are great so I won't delete them.

 The whole city is available for art exibits. There is a art district and they are displayed at random through. Many are displayed within our museums and during art prize the museums are open to the public at no cost. This was clearly placed in our river.

 There is no limit to the medium that is being used for the art that is submitted. this display uses many recycled items.

 I really liked the penguins which were placed in our water fall/fountain in front of the Gerald R. Ford presidential museum.

 This was another display located in the GRF museum. it was quite amazing from all angles.

 Not a part of art prize, but this is just a button for the kids to play on in the park.

 Another exhibit in the park along our river.

 This is another piece made form recycled items. Below is the main which is made form strips of film.

 Another recycled piece and and a close up below.

 I really liked this, shame it had to load sideways though.

 This is done entirely in pencil.

Another day at the gardens!

I took the kids to Meijer Gardens today for the butterfly exhibit. We also took a walk around the sculpture park. Normally we don't walk around the gardens but go straight to The children's gardens. I did a post a while back that has a few pictures of the gardens in it.

This is a very photo intensive post. I took many pictures as we walked through the gardens. We are lucky to have such a place as this near us. I do love the art here. I purchased a membership so we can go any time. The boys love the children's garden.

You can click and enlarge all of these photos. I didn't shrink any of them

Here are some of the butterflies

And these are some of my favorite sculptures from the gardens

This is my personal favoriate, It is outside and you walk by it on the way to the gardens. It is done in a way that no matter which direction you look at it, there are always faces visible.


I believe this one is called History Lesson

This one you will want to click and take a close look at

This one is Nuron
This one you can see year round from the street

This is part of their current exhibit

And these are from the children's garden