Photos from the weaving center...and Animolecules To Go

See, I knew I shouldn't have said anything about how mild and dry the winter was so far...because as soon as I did, it got cold and snowy. And you know how fun it is to walk dogs in the cold when you have the flu? Really fun.

I am actually just starting to feel better. Today was the best day so far in terms of symptoms.

A few pics from the weaving center in Hyderabad, India:

The Husband has gone back to India to try to get things happening for the biz over there. Before he left, I gave him a little box full of "animolecules to go." It was for his birthday (in November), but it turned out to be quite a project and took until last week to finish.

First I made six of them, each in his or her characteristic pose (we have seven animolecules total) out of Sculpey because I had some around. Then I realized I didn't want to have toxic fumes in the toaster oven, so I went back to the art store and got some kind of clay with god-knows-what-toxic-crap added that would self-harden in the air without any kiln/baking required but that wouldn't get crumbly when dry, the way pure clay would.

I have to say, the stuff lived up to its claim. However, what the package didn't tell you was that you have about ten minutes to make your piece before it starts to irrevocably harden. Only ten minutes per animolecule! So can I use that as my excuse as to why they're not perfect?

After they dried completely (within hours!) they became really strangely heavy, like lead weights. I wasn't expecting that either. And since they were for The Husband to carry on his travels, I just added a couple of pounds to his luggage. Oh well.

Then after drying, I had to use PVA size on them to seal them, since as there was at least some real clay, they would be porous. Waited a few days for that to dry, then did a layer of oil primer. Waited about a week for that to dry, then finally got to the painting part. (The sealing and priming was so that I could use oil paint on them.) That was quite fun, though it was hard to paint the whole figure without holding on to, say, little ears, and then how to paint the ears without touching any other part of the body?

They were painted in all earth colors except for Mojito's tennis ball, since that's not a natural object anyway. I have to say, doing the Gadjo figure was the most fun. So small! I actually had wanted all the figures to be even tinier, to make traveling with them easier, but Gadjo was definitely as small as I could make one. They're all correct relative sizes.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com