Casting: Skeleton to Skin Rhino to Carving Wax Processes

Base Sketch

Upper Right Front View

When I went to start on the wax, I realize I did not know exactly what I wanted to do 3-d wise because when I sketched it, I see that it worked but what about depth and layer and the composition as a whole and from different perspective and not as 1 angle.

With that I started to use a 3-D Rapid Prototyping program/modeling called Rhinoceros, which is fabulous.

Over to the left, that's the sketch I decided to base my design off.

Beginning Stage

Back View

I went and started on Rhino and came up with this form and I have different views here.


 Took different pics of different views as reference and also printed out the real size which was 2"x2"x2"

Later I realized it was WAY too big and would be WAY too heavy.  And started to carve down a little bit more.

The more I was doing it, I thought to myself at how much I do not like how it was turning out.

Semi-finished Front

Back View

If you actually look at the first rhino picture, The top left ball is actually very big and also, it was aligning up with the ball right below that which made a terrible composition.  With that, I cut that off and adjust the ball towards the center a little bit which gives it a more balance composition which is exactly my aesthetics.  Not only that, the semi finished looks as if it could come alive.  It's awesome.  I thought it looked a little bit like a Pokemon or a Godzilla.


Since this project was just about form, I was able to transform it from different inspiration and truly focus on the composition which I am happy with.  But I will be needing to file and give it a better craftsmanship.

Jewelry 2: Marriage of Metal and Lamination Inlay

Never have I ever done anything like this.  I just learned how to do marriage of metal and wanted to give it a try.

I decided to do Marriage of Metal. If you do not know how to do it, I'm about to tell you how I did it.

1. I cut out a design on nickel silver.

2. Cut the same design on another piece of color metal such as brass, which is what I did.

3. Fit the positive design of nickel silver into the negative hole of brass. 

Notes for #3: 

- cut tho brass inside the line, so if the nickel silver doesnt fit properly into the hole, you can sand away.  (can always take away) 

- solder doesnt fill big gap and is not a replacement of metal

4. Solder on the back 

Result of Marriage of Metal and Lamination Inlay

That is marriage of metal.  When you take part of a piece of metal away and put another type there.  

After marriage of metal, I wanted to include copper. So I went ahead and did lamination inlay.

5. Cut out another design from the nickel silver/brass design piece.

6. Take that piece of married metal and sweat solder on the back.

7. Solder down to a piece of copper.  (Make sure you see the solder flow all the way to edge. All edges)

8.  Roll press in 1 direction.  (North)

9.  Anneal the metal

10.  Roll press in another direction. (East)

11. File and sand

Casting Class: Skeleton to Skin Sketches and Rhino

First, we had to research forms and I was kind of confused at first. But did sketches for class anyways. There were definitely some very loose and quick ones, as well as some rendered ones.  The first two are many of the quick ones. 

 I love how they are playing with the simple shape and using it to to give a little bit more dimension such as positive and negative spaces to give more interesting compositions.

The third one which is on the left side, second from the top, it's a little bit more geometric and very similar to a post but I just started off as a just a design.  It was very interesting but I am not very a geometrically aesthetic person.  I am trying hard to be more versatile with my design. (I am a natural organic aesthetic person.)

That one was a bit hard for me to grasp so I moved on to my next one.

My fourth design came with a bit of tweaking and adjusting of one of the many pictures I took for form inspiration, which was a group of apple.

I started to draw one first then see how the spaces could interconnect the apples and wonder what kind of form I could do.  Remember this was the beginning stage in the project, so I just did one.  So I can get a variety of sketches in to see the very many different views of forms.

Add caption

With the playing of apple forms, I came up with this sketch of round forms that are interacting in a very interesting way.

I found this to be very cool, simple yet complicated.  It had a nice touch of movement.

 Then I wonder what else this form could take which leads to a new form that I came up with but is still not a winner.

The last design, I thought of how I could stretch the circular forms like the apple forms and space but even more.  Thus came the last one which is very membrane-like. I love it

Later I found it was going to be a bit hard for this project and I went back to the fourth design as a base but this one would have been my choice because of it's complexity.

Re-evolution by a frog!!!! Totally cool!!!!

Take a look at this frog. It's known as the Marsupial Tree Frog.

Due to Louis Dollo, who came up with the Dollo's Law, once you lose something in the process of evolution, you dont get it back.

Humans dont have tail, birds and turtles dont have teeth.

Laws, in the science world means that it cannot ever be broken.

Well sucker, this one is no longer a law.  Because through research, it was found that frogs actually lost their lower teeth about 200 million years ago but with this type of frog, the Marsupial Tree Frog, actually got its lower teeth back about 20 million year ago.

In general, frogs do have upper teeth, which means that it has the enamel and others to form teeth but why is it that this type of frog has the upper and lower? We do not know.

Maybe this might not actually hurt the law cause teeth arent really gone... just part of teeth.

What's my opinion on this?

Well, as mammals, we actually have tails cause all mammals have tails.  We have them when we are in our mommy's stomach but is later mutated and got shorter and go back inside our body.  That's why we you feel your backside, you can actually feel where it was.

Holy cow! what if we actually start to get our tail back? Funny right? And it would help with body temperature and regulations of something. Think about that. =P

Find the Article @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/science/15obfrog.html?ref=science

Solder Inlay, Roll Press Texture and Fold Forming

 These are my samples of silver hard solder inlay. It shows you how you can do it yourself and the steps that I took.

Jewelry 2: Project on Texture and Inspiration

For the first project, we're suppose to do 4 web diagrams and I did 1 really detail one of all the knowledge I know. 

I started of from Marine Life and it kept expanding and finally I got to a word that I found to be extremely interesting. And that was frog and there were all these poisonous things that we coming up such as sea snakes, electrical eels and I thought of another idea theme and that was offensive abilities which was just fabulous.

But I started doing my research and came across some all these things that we just intriguing.  I thought of frogs then rain forest came up.  And what other rain forest do we own biodiversity to? DUH!!! The Amazon.

Home to over 200,000 species of invertebrates. COME ON!!!

Anyways, I started to do some research on frogs and it's offensive ability.  Then came something that I just went... AHHHH Of course and that was Dendrobates

I'm sooooooooo inspired right now with that. 

The project is about the texture and I thought how each different skins and exterior of different types in this family of frog is gonna work out with Chase N Reposse and the different color patinas. Those would just be fabulous! 

Creative Caffeine Pictures Texture and Form