Hmm, maybe I wasn't pretending...

Well look at that. Has it only been a week? I believe it has!

The basil is doing fantastically, the lettuce is clearly taking control of the place, and the parsley has sprouted!

Oh, and speaking of the lettuce, I did a very light harvest in order to remove a few leaves I inadvertently damaged or were getting a touch too big for their own good. They tasted, well, like lettuce!

Changing the water was my main project for today. Though the ppm seems to be higher than I had intended, the plants don't seem to be burned. After about 10 hours, one of the Red Rubin plants seems to have perked up.

More later. Likely when the basil branches or I make a salad.

Pretending to have a Green Thumb

I decided, after getting an unrequested invitation to join a national gardening club which, from what I've read, is a pretty crummy organization, to make myself a little herb garden. To make it better and cleaner I decided to make it a hydroponic garden, since I love it when people think I'm a druggie.

Here the thing is in all its glory. Everything here has about 2 week's growth, so this thing is just starting to swing into high gear.

On the left I have three types of Basil: Lemon, Red Rubin, and Genovese. On the right I have a variety of leaf lettuce which I couldn't identify if I wanted to. I bought a seed mix with the intention of being surprised. Finally in the center I have one Cilantro plant and nothing else. The two empty spots are going to be Italian Parsley, but I had to order the seeds and they should be arriving soon.

I'll update on this project every so often. Expect the next one when the parsley starts to sprout.

Let it Gnome...

Just a little something I made for my mother as a Christmas present.

Swingin' a chain, swingin' a chain...

Hey look! His monocle has a chain! Whee!

Good things come to those who... procrastinate...

Since I've been terribly slow working on the little guy, and since I don't see my ambition to finish him raising in the near future, here is the next Sack Boy I'm working on.



As you can see, this one is a touch smaller.

I'm likely going to put this little guy on hold for a short while, as I want to make a sculpture of the character from Journey, which should present me with some interesting challenges.

Also I have a more artistic piece in mind that I need to get cracking on. I have until mid August to finish it.

The Power of Sack Boy

Funny, isn't it, what one little Sack Boy can do?

Reginald P. Sackerton

Here's a quick step-by-step of the creation of my sackboy sculpture.



Here's my SackBoy, Reginald P. Sackerton. I love this pose, so I used it for my sculpt.



I started with a simple wire skeleton to build on, starting with the feet, legs, spine, and head.



I then added a wire for the arms. I worked with a PS3 controller to make sure my scale was accurate. Turns out that SackBoy is officially 8cm tall, and that's what I ended up with by just going by eye.



Added some meat to his bones. Legs are in place as well as most of the torso. I also filled in the ring of wire for his head with a disk of material to build on.



Here everything for the base SackBoy is in place, fingers and all. Yes, I went so far as to add all 5 of his little fingers on each hand. I also added the tongue and the sleeves for the coat.



Adding the hat. I made a frame of wire for the crown and stuck it to his head and bulked it in with Spackle. I then added wires as guidelines for the shape of the brim.



Covered the Spackle with clay and added a ring of wire around the brim as a guide.



Skipped a few steps between pictures here, in case you didn't notice. Added the bulk of the coat, the scarf, the teeth, all the hair, the monocle, the decorations, and a partridge in a pear tree. This last bit is tough to see, but trust me, it's there. Honest.



Added the base coat of black spray paint, added white for the teeth and clock face, and painted his face. At this point you can also see the chain I added to the monocle as detail, but it kept falling off so I removed it. Once I find a suitable one, I plan to add a little REAL chain and stick it on there.



Did you know that you can rotate your Sack Thing by hovering the Sticker Tool over it until the camera zooms in and pressing R1 and L1? I didn't. After learning that trick I realized just how wrong I had sculpted the hair (Madison Hair from the Heavy Rain pack) so I re-sculpted it.



After that I finished the paint job. I started with the hair, using a dark desaturated brown as a base and adding white for the highlights. I then did the coat, using very thin paint in several layers to get the pattern to look right.



Next I did the pants, hat, and scarf, again using many layers of thin paint. The feather I did last of all, but it's only really visible in this pic =_=;



Right after I did the hat, I added the sticker on top, which is the "Wheel Sketch" sticker and the only sticker on this guy.



Afterwards came the rest of the decorations. Tiny roman numerals are tricky, but all you need is a good brush, some thin paint, and a very steady hand.



And of course, because I knew I would, I left out a couple tiny details before I did my nice pretty photoshoot. Here's what I missed before: The "LBP" and little crest on the clock.



And that's that! If you have any questions about this little dude, feel free to ask!

Oh, and Reginald will now be a regular on the video podcast I co-host: PodCast, which is, of course LBP related!

MATERIALS USED

Lots of people have been asking what I used to make this guy, so I thought I'd just list it off here!

Wire Skeleton: Fibre Craft Painted Wire I got from the hobby section of Wal*Mart
Body, details, and most everything else: Aves Apoxie Sculpt I got from Amazon
Hat Crown Filler: DAP Fast 'N Final Lightweight Spackling I got at Meijer
Paint: Various colors of FolkArt and Apple Barrel acrylics I got from Wal*Mart and Hobby Lobby. The black spray paint was the cheapest can of matte black I could find.
Brushes: A few cheap brushes for the bulk of the work, but for the fine details I used a Winsor & Newton Series 7 size 0 Miniature painting brush. This is the best paintbrush I have ever used. I bought it from Dick Blick's website