Wednesday Again.......

As you know, I am short of time on Wednesday because of the afternoon mini meeting. I did manage to get something done on the bookshop before I left.

I have decided that the outside of the Buttercup Bookshop is going to be Storybook Style. What else would you do to a bookshop? Coincidentally, that is also the name of a book that I bought a couple of months ago. It is full of beautiful photos of real houses from the 20s and 30s, mainly in California, that were built to look like something out of a fairytale.

I am using that as a jumping off point. I started this morning putting some rock work here and there on the base of the house. I am using DAS air hardening clay for this.

The nice thing about the style is that there are no rules other than the fact that the building should look like something from a fairytale. In other words, there really aren't any rules. They are usually kind of organic like they were just built willy nilly or kind of grew out of the earth.

This solves my problem of the curvature at the top of some of the windows and doors. Rocks can be piled up in any shape.

I started with flattening the das to about an eighth of an inch thickness. I spread a bit of white glue on the wall where I wanted to put the clay. Then I just started carving rock shapes in it. My tool of choice is a stylus that is usually used for pottery work. It has a curved metal blade, not sharp, at one end and a pointed blade on the other. I can't leave even tools undecorated. The handle on this one was done with poly clay. If anything plain lays still long enough, I will decorate it!The only other tools I use for this are the stencil brush in the photo and an exacto knife once in a while. The stencil brush is used to pounce the rocks to make them look rough. It works like a charm.

I may go a little darker on the yellow with an antique burnt sienna or ochre wash. It lacks depth the way it is right now.

That's it for today. Short and rocky. See you tomorrow.