LotusBlossom

[amberella]

Rough cut this piece and propped it up inside the case to see what I (& you) think ... yes or no? I'm leaning toward keeping it because it will be all blank on one side and like I said, more room for fun artwork. Ideas for what to paint on this piece?

amberella

[amberella]

One of the things I dont like about acrylic cases (nothing against your work) is that its hard to keep them from looking plain or messy. With the added artwork I think it would look great!

Yeah - I agree 100%. I'm kind of trying to accentuate that plainness with this project... fixing up all the cabling will really help give it the clean look. It's definitely an uphill battle in that tiny, delicate case. Tomorrow I need to go get some more stencil plastic & paint for plastic before I can keep going, so perhaps more sometime this weekend.

I've got a big night out planned in Ft. Lauderdale tonight , so if anyone wants to get their ass kicked on the pool table, I'll be at Capone's till late.

TGIF!

amberella

[amberella]

I like the concept of doing a cutout, but actually the point is to (under normal lighting) have only these faceless white elements with no indication of the rest of the artwork. I want it to fit in with some neat modern decor to look more like a sculpture of some sort rather than an in-your-face mod. I'm going to leave the motherboard uncovered on the other side of the case, so its fun purple-ness will be the only thing visible. I think perhaps some chakra symbols or i-ching? I realize at this point I'm basically inadvertently reconstructing my tattoo, so I'd like to get away from that has a lotus, mermaid, and i-ching symbol LOL. **strains brain to think of something new**

I just got the stencil plastic I need so I'm getting to work now.

amberella

[amberella]

Nice case mod, Great Ink. Im getting my Lotus + Koi tattoo done soon.

Thanks. I'm adding on a big Kali and working on creating a whole backpiece. It's addictive. Good luck with yours!


I'm thinking this for the square: Hokusai Wood Block ... I want to be sure to pick something classically Japanese, as my tastes now tend towards the Indian style and I have to keep telling myself "no!" hehe - there's nothing more tacky historically-illiterate american than some art thing with chinese letters, a japanese dragon, and sanskrit detailing. It's gonna be the wave or a buddha, but I'm leaning towards wave because I think it will stencil better.

[amberella]

So it took me about 24 hours and 3 different stencil attempts to finally make this work. When stenciling, it's not so much the intricacy alone that creates problems, but the curves vs. straight lines & chunks of space vs. little lines. Straight is easy to cut and blocks of space are easy to cut. Tiny little curves and thin lines are near impossible. The plastic is brittle and likes to break off if lines are extended too far beyond the base - not to mention that the design just looks like a big jumble and loses clarity. But I finally simplified the design enough to have it work (I think).

This is the photo I started with:

After freehand drawing the first unsuccessful stencil, I tried running the pic through a Photoshop stamp filter, which did help some:

I'm working with two colors (purple and green) which together create white. So usually I'd do two stencils, with each having their respective areas cut out and then having the cross-over areas (white) cut out on both. For this design, though, a lot is white, and the white is near little curvy lines which are very hard to replicate across two stencils. And if they don't line up perfectly, you get weird line edges that look like a bungled 3-d image. This stamp helped simplify the design, but obfuscated which areas needed to be which colors. Blech.


After the second stencil broke (and broke and broke - and had positive/negative problems) I had to simplify further.

So in the end I used one main stencil and painted green, then taped the areas that stayed green and painted purple to create my white, then had a separate purple stencil. What a bitch.

There's also some shading that's not visible in the pics.

I think I'm also going to add some Japanese symbols to the right in the blank space. Not sure what to say yet.

amberella

EDIT:

Here are some additional pics of the failures. How exciting.

Too complicated:

Simplified, but pos/neg probs:

Drawing for final stencil #1: