Elephant No. 259: Polymer Clay Prints

At a workshop a couple of days ago, one of the women showed me some printed images on polymer clay. Apparently this is very easy to do, so I thought I'd try it for today's elephant.

I covered the history of polymer clay in a previous post, so I'll just describe today's technique here. From the videos I've seen, it looks dead simple: stick a laser print or photocopy face-down on a slice of polymer clay, wet the back, and rub gently until the paper is rubbed away. Cut or shape edges and pierce for jewellery if desired. Bake and seal the final image.

The charming little video below explains the process far better than I can.

For today's elephant, I went to the local office supply megastore and made a few colour photocopies from a little out-of-print book I have called The Life and Lore of the Elephant. I chose small images because I wanted to turn them into little pendants for a bracelet or necklace. I'm not sure if colour photocopies are problematic, so I made one black-and-white photocopy, just in case.

I cut them to the size I wanted for the final pieces. Because some of the originals had words on them and I didn't think to scan and reverse them, I cut off the words and just used the images. I didn't think I'd end up doing all of these today, but I like having choices.

Once I had the images, I pulled out my stash of polymer clay and softened a translucent white clay called "porcelain" by squishing it in my hands until it was reasonably malleable. I then rolled it out flat between two sheets of waxed paper with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 0.15 cm (1/16 inch).

I started with the image of a little green elephant jumping up and down on a bed. Placing it face-down on the clay, I made sure it had no air bubbles. The idea is to smooth it into the clay evenly and firmly.

Next, I painted on some water, but you can also spray it on with a spray bottle. Once it seems saturated and soaked-in, you can start rubbing away the paper "backing". This process of wetting the paper and rubbing it away took me about five minutes. I mostly used a paintbrush to rub the paper away, but a fingertip works slightly better. The main danger is the possibility of rubbing so hard that you begin to rub the image right off the clay. That started to happen a little, so I stopped.

This was what the final image transfer looked like. I then cut the edges with a very sharp knife.

I repeated this process with one other image, then pierced both of them with a tapestry needle so that I could add a jump ring after they were baked.

When they were ready to go, I baked them together on a cookie sheet in a 212˚F (100˚C) oven for about ten minutes.

They looked a bit dry or faded or something when they came out of the oven, so I sealed them with a glossy acrylic varnish. You can buy special polymer varnish, but any water-based varnish will do. If you use an oil-based varnish, apparently the clay turns to mush.

I painted both pieces with several coats of varnish, then figured it wasn't going to get much better.

I decided to add a large jump ring to each, and strung them on individual pieces of leather, along with crystals and a pearl. They're a bit junky, but as my first attempt with polymer-clay printing, I can't say I'm too disappointed.

The longest parts of this activity were softening the slightly old clay before I could print, and varnishing the final pieces. Other than that, it's very easy and quite quick.

I wouldn't rush to do this again, but if I were to make more of these, I'd probably make them smaller if they were for jewellery of some sort. Then again, they're kind of interesting, and it was fun to try something that, three days ago, I didn't even know existed.

Elephant Lore of the Day
According to legend, older elephants instinctively head towards an "elephant graveyard" when they reach a certain age. Their intention is supposedly to die alone, far from the herd.

The myth of an elephant graveyard has been propagated in books, films and popular culture for decades, if not centuries. In many of these sources, an elephant graveyard is often seen as the source of untold riches, for the wealth of ivory it is thought to contain. The truth, however, is far more mundane—and poignant.

When times are tough—during a drought, for example—starving elephants will gather where they hope to find food and water, such as dried-up waterholes. Because they often die in these locations, groups of skeletons are usually found together. Similarly, elderly elephants whose teeth have finally worn out will also seek out softer water plants, and will frequently die of old age, also near waterholes. The sight of elderly elephants in the vicinity of skeletons may be responsible for the notion that older elephants seek an existing graveyard when they are ready to die.

Large groups of elephant skeletons are also found in killing fields, where elephants have been slaughtered for their ivory or meat. This kind of "graveyard" has existed for millennia, dating as far back as the days of the woolly mammoth in northern Europe.

Interestingly the term "elephant graveyard" has found its way into geology, where it refers to a "hypothetical" accumulation of big blocks of rock that have sheared away from the large expanses of granite known as batholiths.

In this 1932 film, a trader and his daughter go into "darkest Africa" in search
of an elephant graveyard and its riches, and encounter Tarzan the Ape Man.
Source: http://doridro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=836642

 

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information

on a number of sanctuaries around the world)

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

Elephant No. 228: Floral Foam

Although I originally bought a block of floral foam to use for cocktail umbrellas, I thought I'd carve an elephant into it instead. I remember liking to squish my fingers into this stuff when I was a child, so it seemed like it might be an interesting sculptural medium.

Floral foam was invented by Vernon Smithers of Akron, Ohio in 1954. The story goes that he had a flower arrangement in his laboratory that he was taking home to his wife. Thinking that it would be great if there was a material to keep flower arrangements both upright and watered, he produced a phenol-aldehyde substance that became known by the brand name "Oasis".

Technically described as an "open-celled foam", floral foam absorbs and retains water. Apparently it needs to be slowly soaked rather than submerged to ensure that it becomes properly saturated. For carving, however, I can't imagine that any soaking is required.

In the world of flower arranging, floral foam replaced a spiked metal base called a "frog", which sat in the bottom of a vase to hold the flowers in place. Some florists still prefer frogs, arguing that they work better than floral foam, and can also be reused.

There doesn't appear to be much art created with floral foam, perhaps because of the relative fragility of the material. There are, however, a couple of tutorials on carving simple animals with floral foam, as a way of teaching students the basics of carving.

Lions made by children, carved from floral foam, then painted.
Source: http://beingcr8iv.blogspot.ca/2012/04/foam-carved-animals.html

This is the block I started with. It measures 22 x 10 x 7 cm (8.5 x 4 x 2.25 inches). I decided to cut it in half, giving me a block measuring about 11 x 10 x 7 cm (4.25 x 4 x 2.25 inches).

For a cutting implement, I used a small paring knife. If I remember correctly, floral foam is very easy to cut with just about anything, including fingernails, so this knife should be fine.

I'm incredibly bad at carving shapes out of blocks of anything, so I decided I wouldn't bother with drawing a pattern or laying anything on top to guide me. It would only confuse me—and probably annoy me as well, when what I drew didn't magically materialize in three dimensions.

I started by making some, er, very tentative cuts.

I decided next to scribe a bit of an elephant outline, carving and shaving away some more of the floral foam.

This is incredibly messy, leaving individual specks of floral foam everywhere. I continued carving and slicing away to create the major shape, using mostly the paring knife, and occasionally my fingernails. My intention was to squish the foam with my fingers to add some modelling, so I stopped carving at the point you can see in the two photographs below.

Next came the fun part. Because floral foam compresses and holds its shape when you squeeze it with your fingers, I decided to finish the elephant by pushing into it with my thumb and index finger. The two photographs below show what my first finger impressions looked like.

I continued pressing into the floral foam, which is remarkably forgiving. There does come a point, however, at which the material develops a sort of fatigue. It reaches a point of no return, when it stops compressing and begins to fray and break. So I decided to leave well enough alone. Also, it smelled suspiciously like formaldehyde and was starting to give me a sore throat, so I recommend doing this outside, just in case.

One thing to remember is that you can't pinch the foam into shapes you haven't already carved; you can only push things in. For example, although the ears on my elephant look raised, I had already carved them that way; I didn't pull and pinch the material upwards.

This was an interesting activity. It was very easy, and only took about 45 minutes from start to finish. It didn't result in the fine detail I expected, but the material was fun to play with, particularly when it comes to the squeezing bit.

I may paint this at some point to see what happens to it, but I wouldn't rush to make another one of these, mostly because it's messy. On the other hand, floral foam is fun to press, so the remaining half may end up as a desktop toy, poked and squished whenever I get bored.

Elephant Lore of the Day
When I came across the phrase "elephant paths" a few weeks ago, I thought it referred to established elephant migration routes. Elephant paths, however, have nothing to do with elephants.

Elephant paths are the beaten and eroded trails you see veering away from sidewalks. Caused by people creating their own shortcuts, the term is thought to have originated in Latvia, where these trails are literally called "elephant paths"—perhaps because they resemble what a herd of elephants might do to your lawn.

Because elephant paths are thought to say a great deal about human behaviour, there are online initiatives tracking these routes in cities around the world. Private individuals generate content which is posted to sites such as Flickr, Geonames and Wikipedia. The content is then cross-referenced using GPS coordinates and made available online.

Others study the social aspects of elephant paths. What motivates people to take a given shortcut? How often do they use it? What memories are associated with that particular route? Interestingly, some elephant paths become so well-used that they end up being paved. There is a funny example behind a hospital not far from my house. It started as a winding dirt path, but has since been paved with decorative flagstones—eccentric curves and all.

A long and winding elephant path a few blocks from my home. The sidewalk is
about 1.8 metres (6 feet) away.

 

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information

on a number of sanctuaries around the world)

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Elephant No. 217: Painting on Glass

For today's elephant, I thought I'd try painting on glass. Although I've painted with transparent glass paints on windowpanes before, this is actually the first time I've ever painted with opaque paints on glass—on purpose, anyway.

When I was at the art store last week, they were selling these small kits of glass paints for a mere ten dollars. What better incentive to try something than a good deal? The kit includes acrylic paints that the clerk thought might be specially formulated for glass, along with something called "glass medium".

I later discovered that you can actually paint with any type of acrylic paint on glass, the main difference being in how the paint dries and cures. Acrylic enamels, for example, do not need to be heat-set, and will cure completely within a week or two. Regular acrylic paints, on the other hand, generally need the addition of a glass and tile medium to become proper glass paints, and also need to be heat-set. In addition, there are the specially formulated glass paints, which are solvent-based, and need no heat-setting. The latter are the ones that people used to create faux stained glass.

Unless you are creating a reverse painting on glass—which I'll tackle another time—painting on glass is no different than painting on canvas or paper. The main considerations are really only whether you want to be able to see through the paint, and whether you want to have your design play on the opposite side of the piece, if it's not a flat panel. One of my favourite glass-painting artists produces exquisitely detailed tiny bottles which are composed so that the scene on the opposite side of the vessel can be seen through "windows" on the side you're holding.

Two perfume bottles by Lukian Glass Studios.
The bottles are blown by Ron Lukian, then painted
by his wife, Gail Hall-Lukian.
Source: http://www.signatures.ca/originals/about.html

I know that these little bottles are often painted with brushes that are 20/0 in size, so I don't think I'll be creating anything this spectacular today.

For my painting surface, I chose a cylindrical vase, which cost me $1.25 at a discount store. For paints, I used a mixture of the acrylics that came with the glass-painting set, and regular craft acrylics.

I knew I would have a difficult time if I didn't have some kind of design to work with, so I measured the outside circumference of the vase, as well as its height, and made a cartoon to tape inside the vase.

Even then, I had miscalculated, so I cut the elephants apart and taped them onto the inside of the vase separately, figuring that I could fill in the arches later.

I began by painting a bit of pink on the insides of the ears, the tip of the trunk and the toenails. Next, I painted all the grey, and then the colours. I became quite mesmerized by the process, and felt I had to work relatively quickly so that the paints would bond to one another. So I totally forgot to photograph any of the stages in the painting process.

To finish up, I added touches of gold to the elephants, a few fine outlines in black, and the eyes.

I was pretty happy with just the three elephants, but I wanted to see if I could create some approximation of the window effect I like so much in Gail Hall-Lukian's painted glass. So I added the archways, using only gold.

A few tips if you decide to try this:

1. You don't really need special glass-painting acrylics, although the paint will supposedly adhere better if you do.

2. The glass should be cleaned with rubbing alcohol, vinegar or window cleaner before you start, in order to give you a grease-free surface. As you go along, however, it's not going to kill anything if you touch areas where you don't intend to paint.

3. If you get paint where you don't want it, try to catch it and wipe it off before it's fully dry. Once it's dry, you can use a bit of rubbing alcohol on a piece of paper towel to remove anything you don't like.

4. Colours can be mixed and blended, but blending on the glass itself is virtually impossible.

5. The instructions say that you should let the paint dry overnight before applying other layers. I didn't find that it made any difference at all. As long as the paint was dry to the touch, I could layer over it.

6. If you're using opaque paints, rather than transparent ones, remember that—although it may look fairly opaque while you're painting it—it's actually going to allow light to shine through. It's better to err on the side of caution and make your paint a bit more opaque than you think you need.

7. Because the brushstrokes will show when light shines through, it's not a bad idea to pay attention to the direction of your brushstrokes while painting.

This is the kind of piece you'd never put in a dishwasher or use to serve food, but once it's had a chance to cure for a few days, it can be washed by hand. You can also heat-set it on low heat (130˚C/265˚F) in a conventional oven, but it's not strictly necessary. I opted not to, because I wasn't sure if the glass was good enough not to do something weird, and I also wasn't sure if the colours would change. My feeling is always to leave well enough alone.

 The whole thing took me about three hours from start to finish, but it wasn't difficult or boring. I was actually a little surprised at how well this worked out. I wish I'd made the paint a little thicker so that the brushstrokes were less obvious when light shines through, but on the whole I'm quite happy with it, and will definitely try it again sometime.

Elephant Lore of the Day
During the 1940s and 1950s, Gonzales, Texas was the winter quarters for the Dailey Brothers Circus, which happened to have 21 elephants.

In early April 1949, the circus had arranged for the elephants to parade before news cameras. The elephants, however, were not feeling particularly perky, and paraded rather slowly. Nor were they interested in speeding up when urged on by circus staff.

Frustrated, circus owner Ben Davenport sent two cowboys on horseback to the rear of the herd, and allowed them to shoot several rounds of gunfire into the air. Frightened by the commotion of prancing horses and gunfire right behind them, the elephants panicked, trumpeting wildly as they stampeded off in all directions.

Nor did they stop running. Most of the elephants ran about two miles, trampling fences, knocking over mailboxes, and even, in one instance, tearing off the front porch of a farmhouse. One man in a car was so shocked to encounter elephants on the highway that he tore down the road hollering that a herd of elephants was after him.

It took more than two hours for all the elephants to be rounded up. Some were found in the woods, some were cornered against the walls of buildings, and one—a young bull elephant named Butch—was found an incredible six miles away. Davenport brought Butch back to the circus in his Cadillac.

Surprisingly, none of the elephants was hurt, and only two people suffered minor injuries in the melee. Even more surprisingly, the people of Gonzales weren't fazed by the stampede through their town, and the circus continued to winter there for several more years.

Norma Davenport with Jennie, billed as the world's only
talking elephant, Dailey Brothers Circus, ca. 1950.
Photo: Courtesy Murray Montgomery and The Gonzales Inquirer
Source: http://www.texasescapes.com/DEPARTMENTS/Guest_
Columnists/Times_past/ElephantStampede1.htm

To Support Elephant Welfare
World Wildlife Fund
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information
on a number of sanctuaries around the world)
Performing Animal Welfare Society
Zoocheck
Bring the Elephant Home
African Wildlife Foundation
Elephants Without Borders 
Save the Elephants
International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Elephant No. 216: Fantasy Prisme Paint

For today's elephant, I thought I'd play with some weird new paint I discovered at a local art store. I have a hard time believing that it will make the interesting patterns I saw in the photographed samples, but I guess we'll see.

Fantasy Prisme paint is a new product by the Paris-based Pébéo paint company, and is supposed to create a heavily mottled surface all on its own. I couldn't find any information on what kind of chemical reaction causes the pattern to emerge, but you can see a time-lapse of the effect below.

From what I can gather, the thicker the layer of paint, the more pronounced the effect. This presented a bit of a dilemma. If I painted a nice little design on paper or canvas, I probably wouldn't be able to paint thickly enough for the paint to do its work. However, if the paint was thick, it was also going to run, meaning I'd have to corral it somehow. Since I didn't feel like building something with sidewalls to contain the paint, I decided to try painting with an eyedropper.

I had chosen a shade called "leaf", which is a deep emerald colour on the swatch, but looks nothing like the swatch when you look at the bottom of the bottle.

 

For my surface, I used some cheap canvas boards from a discount store measuring 12.75 x 17.75 cm (5 x 7 inches). Since these come three to a pack for a dollar, I felt comfortable experimenting on them.

For my first elephant, I used the eyedropper, blobbing on paint in a general elephant shape. From the two shots below, you can see how I swirled the paint when I applied it.

Because of the way the paint spreads, it ended up looking not much like an elephant at all. This is what it looked like wet. If you look closely in the centre of the body, you can see the bubbly pattern starting to form.

And this is what it looked like when the paint had done its job. I found the effect interesting, but I wasn't all that enamoured of the weird shape.

I decided to try painting with a brush next. The paint goes on much like any other paint, but if you want the prisme effect, it has to go on thick. This clearly wasn't thick enough. Or thick at all. To complicate matters, this form of paint also doesn't really work if you try to build it up in layers. I tried to build up multiple layers; but unless you're willing to really blob it on, the paint doesn't seem to do much. The only parts that reacted were the heavy dots I dropped onto the background.

For my final elephant, I decided to try a combination of painting with a brush-like effect, and overloading the brush to drop on thicker amounts. This gave me an overall look that I liked; but again, the prisme effect was limited to a small area, and is nowhere near as visually effective as on the eyedropper version. The shot below shows the top of the third elephant's head, followed by a closeup of one of the nearby dots.

 A few observations that may be helpful if you decide to try this paint:

1. Although the store clerk told me that this was an acrylic, I'm pretty sure it isn't—or, if it is, it's acrylic with some weird additives. It has a relatively strong smell that reminded me a bit of xylene with a hint of acetone, and it can only be cleaned up with mineral spirits. Even then, the low-toxicity solvent I used had trouble removing everything from my brush.

2. Unless you're willing to sacrifice an eyedropper, don't use one for this. You'll never get it completely clean inside—well, maybe if you have access to a pipette-cleaning bottle brush.

3. The paint is extremely sticky as it begins to dry. In fact, I've never experienced anything like it. Apparently it also remains sticky for hours, so it's probably best to use it in a relatively dust-free environment.

4. It has a smooth high-gloss finish, even when dry, so bear that in mind when using it. If you use it for something like jewellery, you should probably also seal it with varnish or resin. On the other hand, it feels almost like a resin itself. It occurred to me only afterwards that this might mean that things could be embedded into the surface in interesting ways.

5. Although you need to think in terms of corralling the paint because of its tendency to spread, if you paint an underlayer and then quickly blob paint on top of that underlayer, it tends to stay more or less in place, allowing you to thicken certain areas of the painting more than others.

6. I was surprised at how little paint I used. Although I dropped a lot of paint onto my small canvases, I barely made a dent in the 45 ml (1.5-ounce) bottle.

7. As far as I could tell, swirling the paint around makes no difference to the final pattern you get. What does seem to make a difference is the thickness of the paint: the thicker the paint, the larger the bubbles.

I'm not sure what I think of this paint. If you wanted to have a high-gloss mottled surface in a specific area of a painting, this would be ideal. It would also be great for jewellery—either to enhance other surfaces, or to serve as an interesting surface all on its own.  

As a painting medium for representational images, I'm not in love with it, however. It might have been okay if I'd been working on a larger canvas, but I think it's the kind of thing I'd only use for discrete areas of a painting, or perhaps as a background for something else. That's not to say that I won't try this again sometime, but I may restrict its use to jewellery applications, or very specific placement within a larger canvas.

Elephant Lore of the Day
Although we know that elephants grieve the loss of other members of their species, it also appears that they sometimes grieve for humans. Over the years, there have been numerous stories of elephants mourning the loss of human friends; however, it also seems that they sometimes mourn people they don't know.

Some years ago, elephants raiding crops in the village of Katwe, Uganda ended up killing a villager. After killing the man, astonishingly, the elephants took the man's body and began treating it to the same funeral rites they would give one of their own. They circled him, touched him with their trunks, and made soft rumbling noises.

Even more surprisingly, when a group of villagers came to reclaim the man's body for the family's own funeral rites, the elephants refused to move. When nothing would induce the elephants to relinquish the man's body, the villagers got their guns and began firing into the air at close range. Elephants in Africa are nothing if not familiar with the sound of gunfire and what it usually means, so the grieving herd was finally scared away.

Researchers have observed this strange phenomenon before. Of all the other species in the world, human remains are apparently the only ones to which elephants accord the same respect they give their own.

Source: http://www.africapoint.net/general/african-elephant-endangered/

 

To Support Elephant Welfare
World Wildlife Fund
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information
on a number of sanctuaries around the world)
Performing Animal Welfare Society
Zoocheck
Bring the Elephant Home
African Wildlife Foundation
Elephants Without Borders 
Save the Elephants
International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)