Guitar #5, The Hydra Hey everyone! It'd been longer than I intended since my last real post. I've been crazily busy. I'm nearly finished with another sculpture! But first things first, I've been meaning to show this off and talk about it a little. Picture 1: The finished product! Actually, there are several finishing touches I have yet to complete, but this is essentially it. I can hardly believe it actually worked. Picture 2: This isn't where I began. I actually began by trying to carve out of the back piece of an old guitar, but the wood was layered super thin with the grains crossed and I couldn't carve it correctly. I found a piece of wall paneling and started over, first by a light sketch, and then by outlining. Picture 3: Here you can see I've added details and carved around the edges. Picture 4: After totally removing the dark colored paneling top, I took a picture of the break away. Picture 5: Here is the beginning detail, edge cleanup, etc. tumblr only allows ten pictures per post, so the jump to the next one is kind of jarring... Picture 6: Here it is nearly complete! If you look close you can see it's been decapitated in the middle, going from five heads to four. I can't tell you how hard that was for me to do- I'd spent hours and hour detailing it. But the composition was wrong so I sucked it up and knock it's block off. At one point in the in-between process, I accidentally broke off a section of the tail, and it looked so much better I kept it off. During the process I busted two different heads off by accident, and tail in two different spots. The reason part of it is yellow is because I put a light stain on it just before the final detailing. That allowed me to see where I was at. It's a trick i'll probably use again if I ever do another inlay. Picture 7: The carving was warped, and the wood too strong for double stick tape, so I picked up some street sweeper brush wires and used those to paste the carving down. I first wrapped them in tape so that they didn't damage the work. Once that was done, I traced around the entire thing with an exacto knife. I took my time and was very careful not to push the carving. Picture 8: Once that was complete, I began carving out my guitar to hold the work. I have to say that this was the most tense and emotionally difficult part of the entire process. I had no idea if I'd done the outline correctly, and I felt like I was performing surgery on my best friend. I know it's nerdy, but I had to stop and hug my guitar every now and again to reassure it. Or me. Lol. Anyway, I just chose to have faith in myself and take it all the way. In the end, it was almost perfect. Carving out the guitar took a good three days. Finally, I lacquered the hydra and glued it in. I had to glue it in several steps. I finished the morning of the radio interview. JUST IN TIME! During the interview, it was hard to see but several sections were raised up still. I ended up gluing them a good week later. Pictures 9&10 Details! I have to say, I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And I'm amazed it's actually done. I began this in October of 2015, and then had to put it down for six months while working on commissioned projects. It's really quite a relief. Thanks for reading and following my humble little tumblr blog! There's more excellent content just around the corner...









