Metope Tutorial

Last summer I had the opportunity to do a set and lighting design for the play Oedipus.  This is a play that I have wanted to work on for twenty-five years.  I actually became a real fan of Oedipus when I was a psychology major.  But that's a topic for another blog post.

For the set design, I chose to create an acropolis, not The Acropolis.  I found that most Greek citystates had the center of their government on the highest point within the city limits and they were called acropolis'.  The palace dominated the set but the temple of Apollo was also present, upstage right.  We also carved a pair of winged sphinxes to flank the steps down to the chorus.  The theatre department already had two large Greek-esque sculptures, so I designed the set around them.



Set design for Oedipus

On a Greek temple, there is an architectural feature called a Metope.  The Metopes on the Parthenon showed something like 92 scenes from the mythical war between the centaurs and the Lapiths.  I wanted to create a Metope story similar to the one on the Parthenon for the architrave on the temple. 

Sometimes the Metope was carved from a single piece of stone, and sometimes background elements were carved in the main stone and complimentery sculptures were fashioned and placed in front.  These were the Metopes we chose to craft.

The first thing I did was create a prototype because I wasn't sure it was going to work.  The prototype worked very well so I was encouraged and created eight panels of the centaur story.  Here's my process.

Step 1.  Create the story.  If you haven't got a story the panels won't make any sense.  Our story was to be broken up into eight panels.  The story we created was:

Panel 1.  The king and queen give the warrior the charge to slay the centaur
Panel 2.  The king sends the warrior on his way
Panel 3.  The warrior and centaur confront each other
Panel 4.  They grapple
Panel 5.  The centaur tries to impale the warrior on his spear
Panel 6.  The warrior stabs the centaur with his sword
Panel 7.  The warrior decapitates the dying centaur
Panel 8.  The warrior presents the head of the centaur to the king and queen

Step 2.  Acquire a whole bunch of GI Joe, Ken and Barbie dolls, plastic horses and such.  I had to scour several thrift stores for about a month to come up with enough dolls to complete the Metopes.  Our collection featured an Edward doll from the Twilight series.  I figured we needed 17 or 18 male dolls, 2 female dolls and 5 horses to tell our story.



The raw material with the prototype in the background

Step 3.  Prepare each of the dolls for demolition.  This step consisted of cutting the hair on some dolls, cutting out the boards for the Metopes, designing each scene on the board and marking the dolls with a Sharpie Pen to get the saw cuts just right.



Giving Edward a haircut

Marking the Ken doll

Step 4.  Cutting the dolls and doll parts.  I wanted to show different angles of bodies so our Metopes were more dynamic.  I chose to use a bandsaw to cut them because I felt I had more control.  If you choose to make a project similar to this, you must always keep your fingers behind the blade and away from the blade, and pull your work through.  You should also wear safety glasses when using power tools.  Some of the bodies I trimmed to be shown straight on, but most of them I showed at three quarters or profile.  It's all in how you cut them.  The most important part of this is to make sure your cuts are straight so you have as flat a surface as possible to attach to your board.

I also found that you have to cut a flat spot on arms and legs to get them to look right when mounted on the boards.



Cutting up Ken



What Ken looks like inside

Cutting up a horse

Step 5.  Attaching the doll parts to the base.  This is where good composition comes into play.  It's important to lay all your parts out before you begin attaching to make sure everything looks right.

On the prototype, I tried five minute epoxy and E-6000 first.  They worked ok, I guess, but the plastic parts tended to break out of the epoxy and the E-6000 took forever to cure, so I tried good old fashioned Hot Melt Glue.  It worked instantly and the best of the adhesives I tried.  When we were attaching the doll parts to the wood, we discovered that certain parts, such as free legs and arms had to be shimmed up to keep them in place.  Cutting a length of a hot glue stick worked very well.  On several panels, I needed the warrior to have a shield, so we found some cheaply built escutcheons from some hanging lights and screwed them to our boards.



Attaching the doll parts to the base



Attaching the modified escutcheon



As you can see, they are naked

Step 6.  Accessorize.  During this step, we added the stools for the queen, the swords for the warrior, the spears for the centaur and clothing for all.

The clothing was made from air hardening clay.  The stools were made from carved blue foam, random wood turnings and beads.  The swords were made from popsickle sticks, cut out and the spears were merely dowels.  These were going to be seen from afar so some of these details did not need to be completely rendered.

If I were to do this again, I'd probably attempt to find a substitute for the air hardening clay, as it tended to be brittle and also cracked a bit when it dried and cured.  That being said, it worked fine for something that was static.  If it were a moving prop it would have to be a little more robust.



Accessorized

Step 7.  Mastic and painting.  The plastic from the dolls takes paint differently than the wood on the stool.  The wood takes paint differently than the blue foam.  The blue foam takes paint differently than the air hardening clay.  That is why I use a mastic for a substrate before I paint props like these.  I like the product, Jaxsan 600 or Poly ViCryl, which I have referenced in other tutorials.  The mastic is white and creates a Gesso like texture on which to paint.

The paint job consisted of three or four colors from the set, painted in a scumble pattern.  A scumble is a spotty wet blend.  After the scumble, the last step before installation was a raw umber wash.



Mastic and scumble

Panel 1:  The queen and king give the charge to the warrior
Panel 2:  The king sends the warrior into battle
Panel 3:  He meets up with the centaur, prepared to do battle



Panel 4:  They grapple
Panel 5:  The centaur attacks with a spear
Panel 6.  The warrior stabs the centaur with his sword



Panel 7:  The warrior decapitates the dying centaur
Panel 8:  The warrior presents the head of the centaur to the king and queen

Cosmetology Head Tutorial

I walked past a beauty school in our town that had gone out of business and there happened to be some people there.  I went in and long story short, I bought five heads for Halloween.  Since that time, I've found several more at the local thrift store and I went to one of the other beauty schools and acquired a bunch more of the spent heads.

Over the last year, I have modified a few of them, and I have a blog post about them already.  One of the heads has some of the flesh cut out and the eyeball and part of the jaw is exposed.  One has an eyeball popped out.  Another has an exposed brain.  Garrett helped me make the eyeball one and I made the brain one for my son-in-law, Nick.  Rhys wanted to help me with the next one.  This time we took process shots so I could write a tutorial here.

All good projects begin with a good design.  We decided we wanted to have a portion of her face ripped off and the skull exposed.  We began by drawing the section of flesh we wanted to remove, then used a utility knife to cut away the rubber.  We cut away part of the scalp as well.  We always save the portions we take away in case we want to use them again.  That was the case with the scalp.



Cutting the flesh away



Peeling the rubber skin

Next we removed the exposed foam and hollowed out a portion of the head.  That was to make room for the skull.



Cutting away the foam



More demolition



Hollowing out the head



The head and the foam skull we just happened to have laying around

The Halloween skulls and the cosmetology heads are about 85-90% lifesize.  They match up pretty well.  The next step is to cut and place the skull until it fits just right.  This is one of the most involved part of the project.  There isn't a recipe or a pattern showing how it goes, you just have to cut and fit, cut and fit until it's just right.  When I do a project like this I like to cut a little bit bigger than I think I'll need because it's easier to trim than it is to add. 

Last year I acquired two cans of Liquid Nails adhesive from a paint store that had discontinued them.  It's a bit of a pain because you have to scoop it out of a can instead of shooting it through a caulk gun, but cheap is always good, and that's the adhesive I used for this project.



Cutting the skull



Fitting the skull to the head



Final placement

Rhys and I decided we liked her better with hair, so we added the scalp piece back with some Liquid Nails.  Then it was time to remove the base and hack up the neck so it would appear to be a severed head, but the act of severing wasn't necessarily clean.  I used a saw for the base and a utility knife to distress the cut.



Hair restoration



Removing the base



Hack job

The next step is to add a substrate to the cut and carved foam.  This is done for both protection and to provide a uniform surface that will readily accept paint.  I have used Jaxan 600 and Childers CP-10 Poly Vicryl as mastics for coating foam.  There are other products available for this purpose as well.  Many theatrical suppliers have products specifically for coating foam.  In my opinion, they all work about the same, so whatever is on hand or whichever is cheaper is the best option.

I coated the foam on the base and then the foam skull.  Then I applied folded paper towels as a mache to create the meat on the skull.  I used the ViCryl as the medium for attaching the towels.  The nice thing about ViCryl is that it's water based and it dries very rapidly.  Once it's dry it is odorless as opposed to some of the carpet latex adhesive mediums that some home haunters use.



ViCryl



Mastic on the foam, also covering the unfortunate "neck tatoo"



Mastic mache with model skull in background

The next step, once the mastic is dry, is to paint the head.  I started out with a base coat of acrylic paint.  The colors I used were Unbleached Titanium and Parchment.  While that was still wet, I used a fan brush with straight Burnt Sienna and dragged it across the "meat" areas.  Finally I painted Paynes Gray in the cracks in the eye socket and the nasal cavity.  Then I thinned the Paynes Gray and painted a wash in the eye socket, the nasal cavity and around the teeth and gums.



Base coat



Base coat and work-up finished

 Once the base coat and work-up are dry, the next step is to paint the skull with Design Master Color Tool.  When building stage props or Halloween props, I have three colors I use more than any others in the Design Master.  They are, Glossy Wood Tone, Cherry Wood Tone and October Brown.



Design Master

The process for painting the skull begins with Glossy Woodtone all over and October Brown in the eye sockets and nasal cavity.  Finally the Cherry Wood Tone is sprayed on the "meat" and in the eye sockets.  This step is repeated until the desired color and value are acheived.  I like to wear a vinyl glove on my right hand and contort it into different shapes to create a frisket.  I like to do it that way because it's quicker than masking tape and paper.



Design Master

When the design master is dry, the next step is to paint the blood on the neck and around the gaping wound.  I use acrylic paint for my blood.  I use a combination of the following colors, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Cadmium Red Deep Hue and Dioxazine Purple.  I stipple these colors alternating the brown and the purple and basically stippling the crimson all over.  Then I use the cad red as a bloody highlight.  Once the acrylic is dry I then coat the blood with a gloss medium so it looks fresh all the time.  Finally the last step is to paint blood spatters around the wounds.  I do this with the crimson and cad red in a toothbrush and run my thumb over it to flick it where it needs to be.



Blood on the neck



Flicking blood



Voila

As I look at the picture of the finished project, I realize that the inside of the nose is too shiny and maybe the inside of the eye socket.  I think a bit of clear flat medium would fix that.

So we have one more head for our Zombie Walk.  These heads are very versatile.  They can be modified in many different ways.  The biggest ingredient in doing this is your own imagination.  Go forth and modify!

How I Spent My Summer--Travelogue: Part IX

Trip #10--Wright Creek, Father and Sons Campout
Every year, the church hosts a Father and Sons Campout.  It is very important to my two youngest sons especially.  The campout is usually held in the spring, but for some scheduling reason we did it during the fall this year.  Both Rhys and Garrett asked several times during the summer if we had missed the Father and Sons Campout.

The last couple of years we have booked the camp at Wright Creek, which is owned by one of the local congregations of our church.  Wright Creek is about thirty miles away from town and cuts through Green Canyon.  The campground is peaceful, wooded and largely unimproved.  The campsites are nestled in a grove of aspen and stands of juniper.  The east wall of the canyon is dominated by hoodoos of welded tuff.  Hoodoos are erosion features, carved primarily by wind.  They tend to be wierd, otherworldly rounded boulders that don't appear to belong in the surrounding landscape.




Wright Creek



Aspen and Juniper



The Hoodoos



The moon over our campsite

I invited Nick to bring his boys and we all camped together.  Tyler couldn't come because he had to work and Connor didn't come because he is too young to be away from his mother for a night.  We arrived around 6, ate dinner and set up camp.  For some reason, and this is as it always is, my sleeping bag was over a large rock so I didn't sleep very well.  I spent most of the night adjusting and trying to find a comfortable spot on the rock.  There wasn't one.



The Gang

Nick and I got up with the sun on Saturday and went to the main gathering area and built a fire.  I like fire, and I like to build big ones.  The Bishop suggested that I build, "White Man Fires."  Not sure if I should have been insulted or complimented, but I took it as a compliment and everyone who huddled around it in the brisk morning air seemed to appreciate the warmth.

After that, I went around the campground taking pictures of pretty things while I waited for everyone else to arise.  While I was about, I saw some Oregon Grapes that were ripe.  I hadn't ever tried one, so I did this time and found it somewhat bitter, but with a surprisingly pleasant aftertaste.



Fall foliage in the mountains



Oregon grapes



Random aspen

After breakfast we struck camp and headed to the hoodoos.  One of the highlights of the Father and Son Campout at Wright Creek is to climb the hoodoos the next morning.  It doesn't require much technical climbing, but there are plenty of areas for scrambling.  Lots of crevices, caves and chimneys to explore.  It's something we enjoy doing.



Hoodoos



More hoodoos



Group shot on top of the hoodoos



Random hoodoo



The descent



The hardest part of the climb.  I had to fit through there

After the rock climbing, we split company with Nick and his boys and made our way home.  We stopped at the ruins of the Teton Dam.  The dam failed in 1976 and destroyed a goodly portion of several local communities.  The house we are living in was built in 1974 and survived the Teton Dam Flood.  Around here, time is measured in terms of "pre-flood" and "post-flood".



The boys at the dam

We had a great time.