The Head Project: Keeping it Real.

Today I spent several hours in a coffee shop making sketches for this piece that I am working on. The head structure is becoming a much larger project, which somehow when I was originally putting it together I suspected would happen. Basically what I have determined is that I am going to put together a cross hatched support using shingles that mimic my line worked cross hatching with the big head in the foreground. The sketch comes out looking like this:The shingles that I have came off of the roof early this fall, which means that they are in pretty rough shape. It's not like anything that comes off of this house is in particularly tip-top shape. So we're talking a little dry rot and some brittleness, so screws seem right out. Even though drilled holes seem to go fine, the expansion that the screw would make out of the hole seemed like a bad idea, so I decided to join each piece using a loop of wire. Here is the beginning of that:


The shingles seem to be holding together well with the wire, and the wire seems relatively non-invasive to the flow of the wood. There is not too much shine, and not too much weight added. I think it will work out well.

I also managed to piece together the face with strips across the back today and added the first eyebrow shape. I went with finishing nails as I liked the repetition along the brow area.

This project is going better than I had really suspected it would. I am very pleased because the other options that I had worked up for myself in the studio were just so lacking in hands on time that I couldn't get into them. This is meaty enough for me to really get into and it is more personal than a lot of the projects that I develop as well.

Hope you like the progression and hopefully I have more for you tomorrow as well.
Til then.

Peace
-Mike