What force is pushing the water wave back on itself and down?  It usually follows the contour and gets pushed up then out and away by the boat itself, along with lots of droplets and bubbles when it splashes back down.  Or at lower speeds, just goes up the side of the boat a bit and falls straight down, rather than picking up momentum with the boat.

Update 3/8   Frantic Friday before Spring Break!   Going to be quite a few students missing today.  

Our castle balconies getting laid out.   My artist wants to incorporate a bit of the under arch shape once they go up.   This should help tie the presentation walkway in with the rest of the design.  


Heart and Lung structure pieces are getting cut out and assembled.   We again discussed how best to make the lungs look like lungs yesterday, and what materials will work best.   I'll probably pick up some fabric for some of it.   We may use that over top of sculpted foam on the sides and ends.   The fabric would be applied over top and allowed extra for expansion and contraction.
 

More progress on the dragon's skin, but I may make a patina change coming up.   We may go with just black between the scales to make them show up a bit more.   Not sure I like how it's blending all together.


The landscaping lights showed up.  They aren't as bright as I was hoping, but they will  work well for lighting up parts of the project.  We may even attach a couple inside the wall of the castle, pointing up, to get a dramatic affect.  


We got the ships mast painted.   We should be able to get a second coat on today, then start messing with attaching the sail and rigging.


After just using her fingers to get more splash details in our water waves, we experimented with using the round plastic lens as a way to pull the lexan over top and produce a bubble.  We also used the end of a round stone carving handle to push up bubbles in the plastic as it was heated.  Worked pretty well.  


She will continue to detail each wave, and other students will  continue to find placement on the bows of the ships.   Those already attached will also be detailed.


The beads and bubbles arrived yesterday late.   These will also be applied to the waves, once we have the fist layer of structure and details applied.  We should get similar looks to what we did with the Liberty Ships.  Hopefully  with the lighting it should look pretty cool when done, and a bit more next level from what we've done in the past.


The woodshop brought in one of our dragon heads and wants us to put down a 1st layer of patina, then they will again add a bit more detail.  

As a highly experienced expert in water effects now I think the bow wave/bubble effect approach is extremely clever!

The green isn't a bad idea.   Not sure it will be dark enough to have enough contrast though.   We are going to hit the tops of the scales with more copper to lighten them a bit too.

Update 3/14

Mid-break update.

Last Friday was a good day for us, even with so many students gone.

Our lung structure is getting closer to ready for foam.




Our dragon riders cuffs continue to get more detailed.


The interior base color is now done on the ghost bow and our full Longshot.


More splashes were added to the bows of both ships.   Students will continue to add and shape the waves next week when we get back to school.




We also got some decorative stain on the smaller dragon keel carving.   The woodshop will again be carving more details on to this next week.

Looks great!

I got an email from one of my painters.     She had been working on the mural of the Viking village, but took time off to get her Junior Duck Stamp entry done.  

It took a little longer than we hoped and she had to finish it and send it off over the break.   She got it mailed off with one day to go.

Here is the painting.

Oil on canvas

Very Nice!  What is the size of it?   Mail could get spendy depending.

Update 3/19

Where we are at with the murals.   We need to do some airbrushing and start blending areas a bit.   Yesterday, students mixed up new paint to use today.   Hopefully they got the viscosity correct.




We began assembly of the heart, but managed to have a couple oops moments.   We should be ready to start talking about how to cover this soon.


Students made some decisions about how to trim around the thing firing slits in the tower.    It's going to require a bit more tile cutting, but I agree with their opinion that it will look better.


The tiles were already cut for the windows around the castle, but those were grabbed and cut in half for the tops of windows yesterday.
There are going to be some, "WHERE ARE MY TILES!!!" moments today. Students also slipped some black drawing paper into the tower to cover that back wall, so it isn't white.  We felt this would go better than trying to paint it. We also began running lights in the castle.  They showed up in the mail yesterday.


More splash work was done yesterday.   Some students were detailing each splash, and some were adjusting the pieces to fit where they would look the best.  I also picked up a couple sheets of plexiglass yesterday so they can cut out a few more.




Keel carving painting continues with oil paint.  


Students also began cutting out pieces for the floor of our long ship.   We will paint the bottoms before gluing them down.  With so much precise cutting and measuring, I was surprised at how well the initial process for this went.  

Poll is up for sweatshirt color preference.  

I'll update here in a bit with pictures.  T-shirts will also be available  Fundraiser should get going live by this friday, if all goes as planned.

Ash


Sports Grey


Graphite Heather


Indigo Blue


Military Green

+45 for plexiglass
___________________________________________________
Total as of 3/19/24                                $3473.00

Thank you!

As an obsessed waterfowl hunter I can enthusiastically say that painting is extremely well done.

Shhhh, he still thinks he has another month more to go!  

Update 3/20

Time is slipping by fast....a whole month, in a day, and yeah...   The next three weeks are 4 day weeks.   Throw in some standardized testing and time is short for us already.  

Updates from our other projects:
WE HAVE A BLACKHAWK DOWN!   Door tensioner again is having problems.   Probably a sensor missed on the closing, and pulled the tensioner past the point of spring damage.   We have the tensioner down and replacing the springs today.   We may need a redesign someday.  

The F-22 had work done yesterday to its weapon's bay doors again.   The program seems to be working pretty well.  They have a couple little things to get sorted out, but work is getting done, and progress has been made by our robotics students.


Heart is now ready for some organic shapes being added.


Lungs are getting foam added for a more organic form.


We will add foam to the top and bottom, as well as the back lobes.  


This young lady was not happy to find another archway window behind our little Dragon meme.   Oops.    They thought they had them all done.




Working on the castle drawbridge opening structure.   Had a bit of a whoops, so the heat gun comes in handy to loosen up the hot glue so we don't wreck work.


Paint is rough on the walls, but it's getting done.   Today students will work to blend out more of what is there.


More small details on a couple crew members of our ship.




Water splashes with more detailed texture.  


Longship's deck still progressing well.

We also managed to nick one of the light strips going on our castle, so that was bad.

I ordered an extra, so we will be ok.   The student felt so bad she researched how to fix them, and I ordered some splices and we will try them out the next time an oops strikes.


Students will be voting on sweatshirts again today.   They are liking the Ash and Heather Grey.   We will have to see how voting goes here.   We might have to add a third option for sweatshirts and limit the tshirts to 3 colors instead of 4.  

Nope, there will be tshirts as well, just like last year.  

Some of the bubbles that will come later already have some tint to them.   We are also considering lights in the water.   I'll pass along the suggestion of paint too.  That might be a good idea.

Kids were signing up for t-shirts today, so I can get a approximate count.    

Their voting on sweatshirt colors is almost the complete opposite of arfcom.  

Update 3/21
Thursday already!  
I'm hoping to get our fundraiser going tomorrow, if I can get an approval from my Principal to use his credit card for the kids shirts.   We will let it run for a couple weeks so people can gather funds and get us past the 1st of April.

Our sail got a little further along yesterday.   Details will be added as we go with more ropes.   I'm still brainstorming for filling the sail.  We can probably use wire again like we did before.  It's not perfect, but not sure how else to do it.   I don't want to papermache the whole sail, and I'm not sure how effective it would be.





The lungs are getting foam, but it's still a very basic shape.   We also began adding foam to the heart yesterday.


Fall trees are still getting painted for our village.   I'm hoping to see a few more of these ready to be placed in the next couple days.


Shields for our viking crew are coming along.   Students have a large selection of designs they are using, and marking off, so we don't get multiples of each design.   Probably need to get our BFL in there at some point.   I'll talk to one of them today about it.  




Balcony for one of our castle windows going together.  


Version 2.0 of lights in our castle, complete with no further cut strings.


Braided Mohawk dreads for the dragon rider's hair.   I also ordered some fairy lights for his skull, and the bows of the long ships.

I also go my sections and numbers requests for next year.  


Requests for my classes are up....    164.    100-120 is about max but I run over that every year.   About half of all students who want to have "Vocational Art", where most of the work on these projects takes place, won't get in.     Kind of a bummer, but it is what it is.  I normally teach 2 sections of Voc Art but we have enough numbers for 4 full sections.

All I can think of for the sail is the diluted Elmer's glue soaking the fabric, then letting it hang for a weekend suspended between 4 points so it forms the normal 2 dimensional catenary surface that it would naturally show when full of wind.   I don't know if there will be air currents or not to disturb it, it would be kind of flexible after 1 coat but mostly formed.   Worse case would be wash it out and try wires but connecting fabric to large enough wires to not bend back over time might prove difficult.

I suppose that glue-water is what you were referring to with the "paper mache" option?  Seems like best one to me but haven't put thought into it.  The two axis bowing is the difficult bit to make it look 'blown' but otherwise jut some #10 o4 #12 romex copper would be stiff enough to hold the shape but bonding to fabric is the e tricky part, unless you use matte black very small safety pins and go over the copper with black sharpie before starting.

Yeah, the glue & water thing may be the way to go.   Not wild about it....   If it is too thin, it runs to the low point in the sail and pools/drips.   If it's too thick, it can leave brush strokes and be too thin in some areas.   It can also discolor areas.   Hmm......but it will probably work.  

Wire works but is pretty rough looking.   It's also hard to find thicker wire locally.

Both of you!!!  

It will be a busy day today.   Should have the fundraiser live in a few hours.   There should be 6 options, 3 t's and 3 sweatshirts.   I got an email last night letting me know that 6 was definitely an option.

Update 3/22
WE ARE LIVE!  

I just want to throw out another huge THANK YOU!  to you all, and all your support of the last 12 years.   There are six different options in our fundraiser, 3 t-shirts 3 sweatshirt colors, and of course, if you wish to just donate and not purchase a shirt, you can do that too.  


When ordering, order a size up on the sweatshirts!   I found an XL was just a bit smaller than my normal XL hoodies last year.   T-shirts run true to size and long enough for us taller folks.   The shirts and hoodies are exactly the same product from last year.  Very soft, don't shrink in the wash, and fit really nicely.  I love them

I've tried to price these as low as we can and still raise a few funds.   We make about $5 per t-shirt and a little more on the sweatshirts. This is based on if we only sell 50.  I think we can do more, as we hit 237 last year, but every year is different. Last year we raised $3,110 dolllars!   ARFCOM is always so crazy generous!  

With each shirt sold, our cost lowers, once we sell past 50.   I should have that many orders from just the kids and staff here at PHS.  
https://www.customink.com/fundraising/phs-panther-art-2024-2nd-age-of-vikings-fundraiser

Update 3/22.2
https://www.customink.com/fundraising/phs-panther-art-2024-2nd-age-of-vikings-fundraiser


We will blame brass if this doesn't work.  We can find him a crow cage somewhere in the castle.  


This morning, the glue seems firm, but pretty thin.   Not sure how it's going to go when handling and moving.  Might have to come back over with a thicker coat of hide paste for taxidermy.


More splashes for the bow of the ship.   Lights should be here early next week.   Students are looking forward to adding them and all the bubbles, beads, and glass.




With the duck stamp entry mailed off, I have my mural artist back to work on mountains behind our village.


Lights give our castle some life.