The semester ended, for me on December 8. I had both of my *finals* that day. 
First up was Beginning Metals where I presented my spinner ring. The brief was to create something that represented a social norm dysfunction and oh, it also had to have a hollow component. I decided to make a artsy-fartsy ring that was also a fidget/spinner. A person could wear the ring when at work or out an event and play with it and (hopefully) not get looked at for playing with a spinner *toy*.    I drew my prototype in Rhino as an personal challenge.  Then I set out to make it. Even though I knew I could do make it during class time since we had over 3 weeks to work on it, I did most of the work at home, in my studio because I found the noise of the class distracting when I really needed to focus - such as when soldering. What I did in class what sawing, filing, and some prototyping.   I received an A in the class and here is a picture of the ring

The next project in Beginning Metal is to use mixed materials which mean metal and something that's NOT (non-ferrous?) metal - plastic, leather, wood, fabric, or food perhaps???? 

Which means there has to be rivets involved. I have not done any riveting in oh maybe 15+ years. Let me correct that, I have riveted but I have used pop-rivets or 2-part rivets or prepared rivets that will flare; most of these were on leather project.   For this project we have MAKE OUR OWN RIVETS out of wire or tubing.  And because it's mix material we have to make really, really, really tiny washers to go between the rivet and the non-metal material. 

As a warm up exercise we were given the assignment to make a charm or small pin using rivets and of course mixed materials.  This weekend I pulled out some 20 gauge copper and brass, some leather scraps, and some left over ends from colored cable ties.  I started with cutting out some pieces from the 20 gauge as my pin/charm base. I then drilled holes in the base and my other materials. I even drilled holes in other 20 gauge to fit my wire and tubing so I could then punch out those washers. I drilled holes equivalent to 14 gauge as that's what I had in the wire and tubing.  I cut 2 leather circles out and punch holes in them, and again drilled holes in the cable tie ends.  Next up was figuring out how long to cut the wire and tubing for the various riveting attempts. 

First up was just riveting a washer to base. Next was riveting a cable tie end to the base. I then riveted leather followed by leather and 2 cable ties. The last one was 4 cable ties. Oh yes, there were many failures along the way - either the tube or wire bent because it was too long, or the rivet fell out because it was too short and could not flare over the sheet metal,  and many many many dropped proto-rivets on the floor but along the way, while looking for them, on the floor, I found a CZ I lost weeks ago on the ring project YIPEE but I never found one of the proto-rivets.

Maybe when I get to the end of the actual project I will not hate them as much but I will probably never, ever love making and using rivets on my silversmithing projects!!

For the latest module in the Digital Fabrication class we have continued to work in Rhino to create tracings to cut vinyl with. Once we took pictures of ourselves, outside,  we decided what would be black and "white" - or clear. The picture is then imported into Rhino and the tracings made. From there we made them life sized and prepared the pieces to be cut; no piece of vinyl could be wider than 25 inches but could be as long as we needed so we had to plan wisely.  After cutting the vinyl we weeded, remove, what would be clear and then applied very sticky transfer paper. We spent an entire class working in teams to peel off the backing paper, position a piece on the wall, window, or floor - sticking it down and then peel off the backing paper making sure there were no wrinkles or bubbles.  My pieces are me stretching, the deer, and some grass which was also shared with the other students. I did not take my pictures in Sewell park but outside my house in Canyon Lake. The description of the exhibition and the Sewell park sign were made and applied by our teacher and teaching assistant.  The last few pictures show me applying the deer to the wall.

For the past 2 weeks, in Beginning Metals, we have been working on hollow rings or a way to learning sawing, soldering with hard, medium, and soft solder, filing, and finishing.  Yes, I do know these things BUT I have never made a hollow ring before so that was what I WAS LEARNING.

First we measured a finger for the ring hole and soldered it round and to one side of the ring, using hard solder. Then it was figure out what the side wall(s) would be and using various round pliers and round mandrels, form the side piece and solder it to the same piece of metal as the ring hole. It was on my way home that night that I thought I wanted to texture my surfaces so what did I do... I redid what I did in class and used my rolling mill to put a spiral texture on all the exterior metal; I unsoldered the ring band, cleaned it up and re-used it.  I drilled some air holes to be a decorative element and using a setting burr, counter sunk them.  I was getting ready to solder the other (shall we say back plate on) side on when I had the idea to do tube sets over the holes... This is when I realized that setting the stones would be rather difficult since it was a hollow ring. MY engineering kicked in and thought that IF I soldered a support wall, inside, and around the holes, it would provide the support I needed, which I did. And... then I realized I had more than enough 4mm CZ's but not enough tube settings and ordered them from Rio; I would have to use silver because they don't make brass one and I was not going to make them either. While waiting for the settings to arrive, I did the soldering of the back plate, trimmed and removed the extra metal. Yesterday the settings arrived and today I soldered them on; I had a little bit of solder creep and removed what I could because I forgot to mask the seams with white out; you can see it in the last few pictures. Then I set a green, yellow, purple, and lavender stone on each side.

First - Tomorrow starts the 3rd week of classes. I am glad I am only taking two classes as I have lot's of time for me, at home. In Beginning Metals we just finished our first project which was to saw and file a peace symbol. We were given a paper template with a round symbol on it but over the weekend I decide to make a bigger one based upon the one I had bought in Greenwich Village (that's in NYC) in the late 60's. In Digital Fabrication we are learning how to use Rhino 8 which is a 3D, and 2D, software package that can create files used by digital cutting machines, like a Cricut, laser cutters, 3D printers, or various types of CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machines like lathes, routers, etc. We really haven't made anything thing but that should happen soon.

Then this week on my non-school days, I made making things to sell via the Metals Guild (a.k.a. club) in a gallery in Austin or at the Market Days in San Marcos on the 2nd Saturday's of the month. Items for the gallery will be mostly silver and for the Market Days they will be copper and brass. 

​And today I made a large lentil bead for a friends daughter, as a pocket fidget thingy.

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Since spring break ended, school - specifically the amount of homework has been crazy and I am only taking 3 classes. 
I have registered for the Fall 2025 semester. I will only take 2 classes: Introduction to Print Making and Introduction to Metal. Print Making should be fun as silk screening, registration, image development and more is taught and yes, I probably know everything that will be taught in Beginning Metal but I am hoping to refine some of my basic skills; besides it is requirement for the more advanced metal classes. 

Here are some pictures of my recent projects but not the final projects; those I will post when the semester has ended in 2 weeks. 
​The first 5 are from Studio 2, then 3 from Core 2, and lastly 1 from Beginning Drawing.
Click the image to have it open larger.
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We have reached mid-term and Spring Break has begun.
I get a week of not driving to campus and back but I do have some homework. 
This semester, so far, has been very stressful due to the quantity of homework AND the size of the assignments.  
My grades are still good - in the A range though there are many assignments I am not enjoying and don't give it my all yet still get a high grade. It makes one one what it takes to not get an A??

Being in art classes, we don't really have mid-term or final exams; what we have is a larger project. Here's what I have for my three classes:
Studio 2: An animation, that's called a living drawing, using charcoal. Unlike a flip-book, it's all drawn/erased/changed on one piece of paper. It is very dirty and messy.  I finished mine last week but cause I did not spend as much time drawing as I could have. BUT I had to spend over 12 hours de-skewing and aligning the images so the animation wasn't so jerky.   because I finished the animation early, I have started on the next module which is Compositions; this is digital and physical collages. The first part is the digital compositions using open source imagery with Photoshop to assemble 4 different pieces. I have 6 ideas and have finished the first one. During the break, I will start to work on the second. I will post all when they are done
 
Beginning Drawing: I will have a portfolio review. This is where the teacher looks at my 30+ daily drawings (6 weeks x 5 days/per week) and I have to upload all the work we did in class. Again, there is one of the weekly drawings below. For the homework over break I am to do a few sketches of models, i.e. people, from an website that has these types of pictures. 
These are to be timed - 2, 5 and 10 minutes; I might go Picasso on these since my skill in drawing life objects is horrible.

Core 2: Finish a photography assignment about the use of color outside the studio along with staging the scene. We have to submit 32 pictures - half are before we staged, the other half is the staged picture. I decided to use the Lalique vase we have with a bright LED light, in it along with 3 colored gels and I have taken the pictures of it in random places; it's slightly reminiscent of the 2001: Space Odyssey Plinth being in various places, again there is a picture below. For my homework, since we are moving into the next module of Typography, is to take 50+ pictures of everyday things with "text". 

Besides the homework I have to do, I plan on relaxing, meeting friends for lunch or dinner, binding the Klimt quilts

This week in Beginning Drawing we learned and played with shading and tone. On Tuesday we did different types of shading with graphite pencils - lines, cross hatching of lines, shading with and without blending and smudging and even shading using few and many tiny marks like asterisks, stars, triangles. This is the first picture below.
Yesterday we used charcoal for a fun exercise of a mosaic drawing. Everyone in class was given a small rectangle of a larger picture which none of us were allowed to see. We have to draw our piece on LARGE paper (18"x24") using charcoal and then blend, erase, smudge and get our hands very dirty. When we were done, we assembled them on the wall to see how well and different our drawings were. My assigned piece is the 2nd picture in the top row, then my drawing which used lots of interpretive dance. Then the assembled images and lastly a close up of my drawing in the bottom right corner of the mosaic.

On a side note, I am learning to NOT stress about this class. We are learning about drawing and various drawing mediums, papers, tools, and concepts and I am slowly embracing my drawings NOT being good and doing what I can; this certainly makes it much more enjoyable

For the past two weeks, the Core II class has focused on the Camera Obscura - the module is about image making.
There has been research and strong proof that the Renaissance masters used it as shown in this great video to watch. It is also thought, based upon other evidence, that the ancient Greeks may have used it too. 

For this project we had to make a camera and then take pictures with it.  I cut out the cardboard and build my camera with a 4x lens 2 weeks ago; a piece of tracing paper was used as the focal plane. When I tested it I found that I could not get any image to focus because the length of the camera box was too short for the size lens I had purchased; it was 4" in diameter. Instead of ordering a smaller 4x lens, I rebuilt the camera with a much, much longer length and after some tests, I was able to trim about 4" off the backend. 

The second part was to come up with a concept and take 30+ pictures. My concept was Victorian-esk. I chose this because the Victorians were obsessed with recording death pictures, seances, spiritualism, memento mori, and the like. I have not done research into why this was so but I theorize that's it is related to Queen Victoria's never ending mourning over Prince Albert, grave robbing for profit or to provide bodies to anatomist, and cameras being more prevalent by the upper class.  For my pictures I decided to use some of the deer bones I have collected and to go into the woods on the property and take pictures of the bones and/or tree that are slightly out of focus, disorienting, and eerie.

Here are pictures - my camera, the test pictures, and my submissions.

Back in 2014 I participated in an art project called A Hundred For One. I made a link for the project of a baby squid based upon an image from a book of plates by a 1700's Naturalist Albertus Seba. I decided during Studio I to draw the plates. I did the front of the squid in the beginning of December, it took 3 attempts to get the proportions correct. I then traced it and transferred it to a clean piece of paper so I could color it. I then started on the back which then got put on hold due to finals and other tasks that had to be taken care of, around the house, when the semester ended. I slowly finished the sketch, transferred it a fresh sheet of paper and yesterday I spent the afternoon coloring it. 
I am starting a new drawing inspired by the fallen Ash leaves in my drive way which will be the first art of 2025, stay tuned.