Art and Crafts
Jun. 16th, 2008 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaFirst, I would like to note just how much I hate Adobe's f***ing updater crApp. Seriously. I paid for their software on a Mac. I shouldn't have to tolerate Windows-like behaviors. It requires I shut down my web browser, and more annoyingly IT KEEPS STEALING THE F***ING FOCUS FOR NO REASON! Oh. Also, after all that, it FAILS for Illustrator and tells me I need to re-install my software in order to update it... Which I've already DONE.
It feels weird to go so long without posting any new work. I have been doing a lot of drawing but most of it has been technical drawings for stuff that I'm building, patterns I've made, and so on.
Not that I've entirely stopped drawing fantasy art. Here's a doodle I'd been fiddling with on and off for the past week: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1383640/ but my volume is definitely way down.
I suppose this matters to me because a lot of my self esteem is tied up in showing things to other people. My ego really is fragile enough that I can run on compliments and grind to a halt when ignored. I'm working on getting away from this. Part of my plan for Burning Man is to set up a fun art camp and then not spending time there talking to people who're looking at it but instead letting them enjoy it while I go off and enjoy the work of others.
I have been busy making things though. If anything, my output is probably up a bit from my normal. It's just not stuff I can easily show off.
Letsee. In the past few weeks I've made 2 super hero costumes, an earring cabinet (which came out quite nice, I should take some pictures of that and post a DIY for it)
2 bizarre shirts (One for me, one for Ashtoreth) a miniature wind turbine, and I'm now 2/3rds of the way through building my full-sized wind turbine. A couple of patches (I was testing doing embroidery 'by hand' using my sewing machine. I can't feed a pattern into it and let it go, but it has the stitches so I just have to mark them on the cloth and move the cloth by hand, but for a $2,000 difference, that's fine. :) I also built some test flags for my Engine de Turbulence (or as I like to call it, The Enturbulator) Looks like it will probably work. Did a bunch of materials tests with Stacey to design cheap heat shielding. I believe we're going to go with a laminate idea. Designed a solar grey water reclaimer, a solar oven that fits into the theme of our camp and doubles as decoration, a giant electric squid, and an overall concept for our camp at BM.
Sewing the full-scale wind turbine is taking a lot longer than I thought though. Mostly because the material doesn't fold well so rather than double-folding the edges and hemming with a straight stitch, I'm single-fold and using a simulated serger mode of edge and stitch on the raw edge. The machine's top speed for this type of stitch is about 1cm/s. The turbine blades are ~2m long, have to be hemmed on both sides plus the ends plus have the velcro attached. There are 24 blades. Although, for an added bit of cleverness, I realized that if I did the hem on the top on one side and the bottom on the other, I'd improved the efficiency of my cloth airfoil slightly because the rough edge is adding more turbulence to the top of the leading edge of the wing at all times due to the 180 degree twist. Very cool. :)
Anyhow... So much to do and so little time. Back to work with me now.
It feels weird to go so long without posting any new work. I have been doing a lot of drawing but most of it has been technical drawings for stuff that I'm building, patterns I've made, and so on.
Not that I've entirely stopped drawing fantasy art. Here's a doodle I'd been fiddling with on and off for the past week: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1383640/ but my volume is definitely way down.
I suppose this matters to me because a lot of my self esteem is tied up in showing things to other people. My ego really is fragile enough that I can run on compliments and grind to a halt when ignored. I'm working on getting away from this. Part of my plan for Burning Man is to set up a fun art camp and then not spending time there talking to people who're looking at it but instead letting them enjoy it while I go off and enjoy the work of others.
I have been busy making things though. If anything, my output is probably up a bit from my normal. It's just not stuff I can easily show off.
Letsee. In the past few weeks I've made 2 super hero costumes, an earring cabinet (which came out quite nice, I should take some pictures of that and post a DIY for it)
2 bizarre shirts (One for me, one for Ashtoreth) a miniature wind turbine, and I'm now 2/3rds of the way through building my full-sized wind turbine. A couple of patches (I was testing doing embroidery 'by hand' using my sewing machine. I can't feed a pattern into it and let it go, but it has the stitches so I just have to mark them on the cloth and move the cloth by hand, but for a $2,000 difference, that's fine. :) I also built some test flags for my Engine de Turbulence (or as I like to call it, The Enturbulator) Looks like it will probably work. Did a bunch of materials tests with Stacey to design cheap heat shielding. I believe we're going to go with a laminate idea. Designed a solar grey water reclaimer, a solar oven that fits into the theme of our camp and doubles as decoration, a giant electric squid, and an overall concept for our camp at BM.
Sewing the full-scale wind turbine is taking a lot longer than I thought though. Mostly because the material doesn't fold well so rather than double-folding the edges and hemming with a straight stitch, I'm single-fold and using a simulated serger mode of edge and stitch on the raw edge. The machine's top speed for this type of stitch is about 1cm/s. The turbine blades are ~2m long, have to be hemmed on both sides plus the ends plus have the velcro attached. There are 24 blades. Although, for an added bit of cleverness, I realized that if I did the hem on the top on one side and the bottom on the other, I'd improved the efficiency of my cloth airfoil slightly because the rough edge is adding more turbulence to the top of the leading edge of the wing at all times due to the 180 degree twist. Very cool. :)
Anyhow... So much to do and so little time. Back to work with me now.
