Unearthed - Cemetery Gates

I've started assembling the outer wall and entrance gate for the cemetery set, will only need it for one or two shots...

Doctor "Whoa"...

The Lady and I have been immersed in BBC telly for the last month or so, a friend recommended the series Torchwood to us and we started there. Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who, a British icon that I was already familiar with from back in the day (I used to watch Tom Baker eps with my mum late at night on PBS I believe, when I was but a wee lad). I hadn't seen any of the new episodes though (the Lady and I dont have cable). So we rather quickly worked our way through 3 seasons of the new Doctor Who and the first season of Torchwood, mostly checked out from my local library. (I've bonded with my library since the storm, making weekly trips, generally checking out my maximum of 6 dvds and 6 vhs tapes. Their selection is impressive, and best of all, free!)

Torchwood is excellent, receives props from us for featuring a gay/bi? leading man who is heroic and strong and not defined by his sexuality. Captain Jack Harkness leads Torchwood, a group of alien hunters trying to protect Earth from invasion. Tons of atmosphere, dark, risque, and fun to watch. I'm looking forward to the second season, with a guest spot by Buffy's James Marsters (Spike).

But I've really fallen in love (again) with the Doctor. I haven't loved a show this much since Buffy. I've enjoyed every new episode of DrWho, and have even been blown away by a few, those written by Steven Moffat, who takes over as showrunner next season, woo-hoo! His episodes have been chilling, and he's really the reason I am writing this post. His eps "The Empty Child" (seas1)and "The Girl in the Fireplace"(seas2) both receive my highest praises (plus, Billie Piper as Rose, yum!), but his third season episode "Blink" is fantabulous, a must see for fans of animation, not that there is any animation in the ep, but there's something there thematically that I cant quite put my finger on, something about all the bits that go on between frames, in the blink of an eye to the beholder. Not to mention, there are stone women in it, statuesque weeping angels that have influenced my Unearthed cemetery set (I will try to recreate them as the gatekeepers to the grave that Herbie searches for. Makes me think about my Vanity Fairies also...) And if my praise isn't enough to inspire you, howzabout this? The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly asked Neil Gaiman to rate his top 10 monsters of the last 25 years, and he placed the Weeping Angels at #3. Get it from Netflix, disc 4 of season 3 of Doctor Who...

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass...

...striking Pandora's DMV set...
I'm running out of space here, and have also been trying to figure out a way to display some of my stop-mo work. Yesterday I killed two birds with one stone.

Shadowboxes.

I bought a 12x16" silver box for Pandora, a weathered 8x10" wood box for Tree Beast, and a 12x16" black box for Widow. These are relatively inexpensive (Michael's puts them on sale 50% off every couple of weeks, I spent about $30.00 on them). The Pandora box is pretty tight, not deep enough, so her knee is squished against the glass, but its a small price to pay to have her hanging on my living room wall...I cut her set down to fit in all of the important parts, lined the sides with set bits too...for the Tree Beast I printed out a puppetless set plate image and pasted that on as the background, I even hot-glued moss to the 'floor' of the box...Widow isn't done yet...all-in-all they make a very nice presentation, and now they're out where folks can see them...I'm going to burn copies of the films to attach to the backs of each....

Cemetery Woodcut

In my last post I mentioned a new woodcut....here is the main plate (it will be "bookended" by two thinner plates of ghosts and wrought iron)....Carving the tiny detail in this plate is a real bitch, I have to say....Ive got blisters from the carving tools and a vibrating right hand from the Dremel....

Salvie likes it, though, and thats something (he's my toughest critic)!

City Park Troll

I've taken a teeny break from stop-mo...been plugging away at the troll painting...there is a show coming up in Sept, with a submission deadline at the end of July, that I have always wanted to be a part of, a Nola gallery has a "No Dead Artists" show featuring all local work. This year I am going to submit the City Park Troll, and a new woodcut that I've started on (a cemetery scene, natch)....Re:the painting, I've roughed in a new head, better angle I think, and shifted the right arm a bit, will have to repaint the right hand tho, its way too large...finished up the left leg, very happy with that....added more layers to the background....added texture to the foreground, which I thought would add depth but really just looks odd, considering how thin the paint is everywhere else...too late now, I'll fix the issue by adding texture to the near side of the bridge, and by detailing the underbrush in the foreground so the texture isn't so much the star of the area, the focus...I'd say I'm about 80% done...