Imaginary Minerals, Bespoke Elements

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Iridescence Star, my other Truncated Great Stellated Dodecahedron. Or you could think of it as "parking lot oil rainbow star". This was a nice shape to make, but don't expect to see any more of them. It's been thoroughly replaced by cooler shapes that I'd rather make! Coming soon!

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The Uranium Urchin

When an icosahedron is covered in 36º pyramids, it's called a Great Stellated Dodecahedron. These pyramids have been truncated, making this a "Truncated Great Stellated Dodecahedron". The paint is "iridescent graphite" with sand gel. And neon green, as you can see in the blacklight video above. I printed this shape in 2022 and finished it in 2023.

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Cube Compound: I used to put diminished cubes on the triangle sides of a truncated tetrahedron. This is the first shape I've finished with a cube base shape, and the first time I've tried painting something like it was fluorite.

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"Da Vinci's Gold-Making Crystal"

In the movie Hudson Hawk, Bruce Willis is tasked with stealing the alchemical linchpin pictured above. This is the first time I've made a dodecahedron stellation with nine points instead of twelve, and I couldn't resist copying this direct pop culture example. To create a base side, I inverted one of the vertexes. Now I have a template for a diminished dodecahedron with a flat triangle side. The Hudson Hawk prop looks like it's dark glass with a gold coating. Working with paper and acrylic paint, I went with a black-gold color shift.

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A Great Dodecahedron with a gold-black gradient and glitter.

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A Great Dodecahedron with a gradient of metallic blue to metallic green. Acrylic paint on paper.

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It's the Great Dodecahedron, Charlie Brown

This looks like an icosahedron with inverted pyramids instead of flat triangular sides, but mathematically, this is twelve pentagons intersecting each other. This shape can be folded together from a single piece of paper, but it's not easy! (you can see that it's paper if you look at the corners) I painted this one aqua green as part of a multi-piece commission in 2020.

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The first stellation of the icosahedron, aka the triakis icosahedron, aka the small triambic icosahedron. I call these ones "Grape Gems" and while I was very happy with the colors I mixed, they are tricky to photograph.

I do like this shape a lot, which is why I will stop fussing over small ones and make them bigger in the future.

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Pyramid Shell (2022) - When you take one corner off of a cube, it's called a "diminished cube". Here you can see four diminished cubes attached to a central tetrahedron. This wobbly shape reminded me of something: diatoms! So to make it look more organic, I wrapped the shape in glue-soaked twine, then left it with a simple white gesso paint layer.

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Gold Star - when you "stellate" all twelve sides of a dodecahedron, it's called a Small Stellated Dodecahedron. I like total symmetry a lot of the time, but in this case I prefer stopping at eleven points, a "Stella Undecimangula".

I finished this model in 2020 (about 5 inches wide), and actually I have only ever done this shape in gold. I have some unpainted ones, I think 'purple' is next in line?

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I was looking for stuff to post, and I found this picture from October 22, 2017. Lots of shapes I only made once, lots of shapes that I still use.

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hello Tumblr. Do you like paper models of geometric shapes? Do you like pictures of works-in-progress? Do you like fictional minerals? Do you want to buy this? Let me know by liking, reblogging, and sending me asks.

This is a prototype shape: the first time I'd attached these 20 points onto a base icosidodecahedron. I went with a basic palette of three shades of purple.