Hulk Feet

Here are the feet thus far. It was very strange filling in the toenail area. Sort of like doing a pedicure. I have been putting off doing the face because it is so detailed and bitty. I keep waiting for that day when I am craving frustrating and fiddly work, but so far that day hasn't arrived.

Yea! I giant box arrived in the mail, stuffed with more styrofoam peanuts than anyone could want in their house and...two kinds of purple glass! Here they are:

To look at one its own, I prefer the bluey-purple on the left but am going to use the reddish, concord grapey color on the right because I think it will give a better contrast with the blues in the other part of the picture. It also reminds me of grape popsicles. Mmmm, yumm...grapey glass....

Rainy Days and Mondays

It's rainy today. And it's a Monday. Blegh. Nonetheless, I bravely trudge on with my Hulk, slowly working my way across his giant green muscles. His hands were not as difficult as I imagined they would be. I tried to keep the glass piece lines following the lines of the arms, hands and fingers. So, in theory, when this is grouted, the grout lines will take the viewer's eye from the central part of the figure, right to the end of the extended arms, therefore giving the image movement and perpetual flow. We'll see. The hardest part of designing a mosaic is keeping in mind that the real art of it is not fitting the tiny pieces into any particular space, or even choosing the colors, but thinking about what it is going to look like once the grout is in place and the dominating image isn't anything make of glass, but is made of the millions of fractured cement lines. (And what color to use for the grout? I can't even think about that yet.)
Here are the feet thus far with a bit of the pants done. These were not fun. I thought they would be, but they weren't. In general, the Hulk is annoying me and I will be very, very glad when I am done. Which reminds me, I haven't gotten that purple glass in the mail yet. If you look long and hard at this poor guy's left leg, it looks like it has been broken in half just below the knee. I didn't notice it when I was looking at the comic page, but now that it is enlarged to almost 6 inches across, it is hard to ignore. In fact, I get quite nauseous if I look at it too much. I thought about changing it, to make it the way it should have been drawn, but that somehow seems sacriligious...or something.

That little red spot just below the image is blood I dripped after I cut myself on the glass. I do actually forget most the time that I am working with glass and that I am supposed to be a bit more careful. This time, I put my elbow on top of the plexiglass while I leaned up and across it to reach the running pliers. Yes, there were thousands of shards of glass on the plexiglass but, really, who would have thought they would all grind into my elbow just because I put all my weight on them? I'd like to think I learned a lesson of some sort, but I am sure I haven't. (Do I wear the safety goggles I am supposed to be wearing? Of course not.)

Hulk 'n' More

It's Friday, which means it's my chance to head to the FIA to work on my flower mosaic (featured a few weeks ago). Here is the studio (or, more accurately, the southeast corner of the room with all my stuff spread about).

I was completely at a loss as to how I should finish the background. I was intending to do a simple blue fade to green background. When I mentioned that to Amy, my mosaic teacher, she had a hard time masking her derisive snorts. She suggested something with "wild colors" and with "lots of motion." What the hell? So I came up with this octopus-type blob. She loves it; I feel the verge of an anxiety attack coming on when I think about it too much. I have no idea where I am going with this, and I have no idea how I am going to finish it. It should look like roses in front of a funky, but discreet, wallpaper, but I fear it looks more like a space creature about to devour the roses.

And here's how far I got today. It really is a wonderful space in which to work. I had to whole room to myself, which isn't unusual, since any classmates that do show up for studio time tend to work (or live lives) during the weekdays and go in on the weekends. As I work I can look out over the FIA parking lot and just beyond it to Central High school. I didn't enjoy my highschool experiences in the least, but I do enjoy watching other people enduring it. I wish I had made the fruit platter much, much bigger.

Meanwhile, the Hulk gets filled in. I worked on his hair today. (That was a pisser; how do you make glass shards look like locks of hair? You don't.) He looks a bit like a tiny guy in a giant, green, padded muscle shirt. I am dreading making the face. It's one thing to do a chop job on a fist or shoulder, but if the face looks blocky or bitty, it will be really bad. I did want to do the pants first, but I had a sudden panic that the purple glass I got was too drab. I ordered two pieces of other purples online and can then decide once and for all after they arrive. Why is good purple glass so hard to find? Another one of life's little mysteries.

The Beginnings of The Hulk

Here is The Hulk just starting to get "fleshed out." This is really a pain, as the glass does not want to look like muscle. Oh, well, I have to remind myself that this is an interpretation of a comic, not real life.
The chest and abs are done, and the arm is started. The plan is to finish outlining the left hand tomorrow, and then complete the arms and hands next. All right, enough for today.

Biggest Glass Underpants Ever

Again, because The Thing's underpants are in the middle of the picture, it seemed like a good thing to get them done early in the project. I expected that it would take me days and days to complete the outlining because I expected it to be very fiddly, but I finished it in under and hour. Maybe the trick is listening to Blondie. Would Debbie Harry permit the outlining of underpants to drag on for days and days? I think not.

In an underpants fever, I decide to cut the blue fill in glass and begin.

And here, late in the evening are the complete Undies. Total time, including cutting the darker blue glass, 2 1/2 hours.

I think The Hulk's purple pants will be next.

BUH-WHOOM! I begin...

I decided to work on the words first because (1) they are in the (relative) middle of the picture and that way I wouldn't be leaning across what I had worked on (it isn't nice to lean on many hundreds of bits of cut glass) and (2) I thought that it would be hard to mess up words and that that would be a good way to get comfortable with the picture. So here is the outlined WHOOM!
After letting it set for a day, I got right into filling in the blue of the letters. Since the letters have a "shaky" font, I broke up the blue pieces unevenly so each lettter would look a bit like a smashed windscreen glass.

Here's the whole WHOOM!

And here is the finished BUH. I only noticed after getting ready to outline the BUH that the WHOOM and BUH have completely different font styles. So I tried to keep the pieces in keeping with this font and cut the pieces as regularly as I could, so the BUH would be more even and tidy.

I'm surprised how really nice the black glass looks. I didn't think creating the outlines would make it look so much better, but it really does. The black glass is completely opaque and really shiny. (It is also a pisser to cut and, since there is SO MUCH BLACK in this piece, since everything has thick outlines, this is going to get tedious--very, very tedious.)