Well the afternoon has gone like this:

2 Seniors
1 lift
1 gal of purple paint
_____________________
=spill of half gal of paint, 1 hr of clean up, 1 purple arm, many very purple hands, purple shoes, purple pants, 2 rolls of paper towels, 1 spray bottle of cleaner, 3 volunteers to help the purple seniors.  



Oh, and the Mars tractor just blew a rear belt wheel.  

They were experienced riveters long ago.  They are great students, and put a ton of work into the last few projects.   And now, they are part of "Team Purple".  

Update 4/5

Sherwin-Williams donated some of its 2024 Color of The Year to us.   It's a blue called "Upward".   We can use more blue for sure.  


They also hooked us up with a texture gun and mud to spray the castle with.  We have a bit more tile work to go before we use that.....and I need to grab a few drop cloths


For a few of the windows in our castle we are doing "stained glass".   In this case, oils on plexiglass.   Its turning out pretty cool.   Once upon a time, I did a few paintings on glass.   You paint on one side and display the other, so you have to put down layers in a way that the bottom is what you want to show.  It's the opposite of what we normally think of doing.    I'd forgotten to tell my artist this.    She's figuring this out very nicely.   This is again, our French Foreign Exchange student.  She's been a huge contributor to our project this year.  




With some of the extra dragon eyes we have, we hid another in a cave under the village.






We got more small scales done, and up on the dragon's skin.   We will work today to make light bulbs around the LEDs then do some painting to blend them in a bit with the back.


We pulled the right wing off for now, so we could paint above it, and also install lights in Valhalla.






Villagers getting some detail paint.


Somebody thinks they are funny.   We will talk about shading for muscles and using something other than black to do it.  


Dragon rider is getting more and more detail.  Eyebrows going on.  

Also!   On our shirts.....Custom Ink sent out emails letting everyone know that you should be getting your shirts around the 19th of April.  Keep an eye out for the email, and for your shirt!

Thanks again!!!!!

I was kind of assuming he'd post them as an update.   With all the pictures he takes of random things and students in awkward situations, I assumed he'd have a few dozen images of the dishevelment.  If students don't want their pictures posted, do the black rectangle over their eyes.

       

Well, the sky was supposed to have lots of purple in it.

I didn't get any pictures.    We were too busy cleaning, and I was part of that.   Didn't need to get purple paint on my phone.

Update 4/8

We are in the 2nd week of April......already.    We need to get busy.  

We have a full 5 day this week, so that should help a bit.  
We should get another dragon installed in the caves today.


Yet another long ship for our floating fleet.   I think I will get her up in the air this week and get some fishing line run so we can start hanging ships.


We began adding epoxy around the eyes on our dragon head keel carving for the ghost bow on Friday.  We need to build up the eye ridge a bit more before we start painting to match.




All of the archways on our castle are getting detail tile around them.   Other details will be installed after we spray texture, and paint.   I meant to grab some drop sheets today for texture, and forgot.    We should be ready for that later this week.   Probably Wednesday.

Masking off those windows will be a nightmare.  Unless you can have a student follow the texture gun around holding a piece of cardboard to define the edges you don't want the texture to go to, maybe one on each side with both sides and top and bottom masking board so you don't need to tape it all up, just not have the texture guy go nuts until the masking boards are in front of windows to preserve.

Yeah, we won't be putting any stained glass windows up till after it's sprayed.   We will just fill the rooms with plastic to keep it from getting all over the lights.

Progress on the diorama has been slow.  My employer is being completely unreasonable and expecting me to actually DO the job they are paying me to do.    Also, I have been painting a lot of the little 1/72 figures.  About 30 of them total, and they do take a long time ... in part because I am not that great at painting, so I need to go back and touch things up a lot.

I added some animals.  So there are two stags and a bear visible in the top of the photo.  Btw - it's hard to find 1/72 wild animals.

I need to paint three more figures, and a bunch of salvaged stuff (oars, planks, weapons, shields, etc.) - that the Vikings are collecting on the shore.  Then I will be done, and I can reveal the entire diorama.

That's looking great!

Update 4/9

Mural work is going well with the right wing removed from the dragon.    We will add more clouds, then Valkyries.   More paint first.    


Slowly and steadily we are getting close to the end of the tower.   We can start thinking again about details soon.


What we have left on the base tower tiles.


The castle is not ready for texture today, but we are much closer.   These folks will find themselves helping to finish the tower and it's details soon.


The guys have ripples molding into the plexiglass, and have attached a few more pieces since this picture was taken.  I think they have one or two more to attach before we will be ready for lights, beads, and more details.


The robotics group reported that they will be installing parts soon on our heart and lungs.   They also have sensors and a program almost done on the F-22.  We will install the motion sensor today, right in front of the main weapons bay doors.  

This morning I hung a few fishing lines for our Viking fleet of longships that will be in the bay, and on their way to the castle.  We might see a few of those up today too.  Not a lot of pictures today, but things are going well.

The T-shirts and sweatshirts should start to show up late next week.  If you get a chance, hit the poll in this thread with what you purchased.  It helps me determine what product colors we should be offering in the future.  

Kids got a chuckle out of that.  It's posted in the hallway now.

Still not quite ready for those details yet.  

Update today on the fight at the top of the tower.

Update 4/10

Murals are seeing more progress, but I'm losing a few students for State FFA for the rest of the week, and a variety of other activities.   I'm hoping we get most of the base coats finished, then we can brush in details over the next week.




Detail tiles on the castle is going well, but we still have more archways to finish.  Students are excited to start texture.


Plastic pushed up against windows where we don't want texture going into the room and covering the lights.




More 3D printed railings.   These turned out perfectly.


As close as we are on the tower tiles, we had to take one panel off yesterday to adjust it slightly.  


Vikings that will be fighting near the top of the tower.


He will be about 5" in total height.  


As for the horn blower, we are still figuring out where and on what tower.  Could go on the castle, but I might be able to talk a student into building a smaller tower in the village.  

Our dragon rider now has a broken pelvis to fit on our dragon, and students are working to fill up his legs a bit with stuffing, so he doesn't look quite so skeletal.


The dragon's lungs have half of the collapsible fabric glued together.  We need to get the other half done, then look at combining them with velcro.


Bottom of the heart halves.


Little more eyebrow ridge on the keel carving dragon. Ready for paint.


Bubbles on our bow wake continue.  We are getting closer to done on these, but need more on the bottom and sides, where it will be most visible in the composition.


View from below, where most will see it.

Update on our F-22

Robotics needed our motion sensor installed, so yesterday, students cut out a hole for mounting the senor and running the wires inside the fuselage.


Opening up the hole, and painting are next, then install of the sensor cube.

Is that a Vortex logo on his door???   Got to love AI.  

Update 4/11

Robotics installed a bit of hardware on our lungs yesterday.


Our lungs are just about ready for testing the robotics portion.   We have the fabric all up in place and just need the velcro glued in.  




Ghost bow is seeing a lot of improvements over the last few days.  
Lights going on the bow wake.


Dragon head installed.


Fitting foam around the base of the head to transition to the keel.


Fitting and contouring the foam transition.  


Trees continue to grow in our village.  Village tower is in the works.


Dragon scales are stalled a bit as we wait for more smaller scales to be finished.   Students are working to cover the LEDs with plastic bulbs.  


Tower fighter.


Dragons' nests under the castle.

In other PHS Art news..........
I'll have to get a better format for the rest of the results.  

Good question.   We will have to work on that soon.   I saw one sword, but I think we might need more help on that.  Shields are being worked on every day.  We have 22 of them in the works.

Not sure we are going to get to texture on the castle today.  We have it all set up, but we noticed we are missing a few tiles on the tower bottoms, and need to get those up there.

Noted.......and while on a surf board.

Are they going to boot Powell Art from that contest too now?

Yet he tries to feed us that BS about a blind squirrel finding an acorn now and again...

The village is looking great!

Thanks!
I'll let them.onow you approve.   We should be able to install a few villagers tomorrow.

Update 4/12

We have Monday off again, as a snow day unused.  Today will be fast and furious, and we are missing a bunch of students for soccer, welding completions, and FFA.
We've been working on a beaver that was abandoned in my freezer a couple years ago.  It's been a struggle, with absenses, and I've had to pull a few Seniors away to help finish this.    Some things are not going to be real great, but we are seeing light at the end of this project.


The F-22 is awaiting a couple little program changes in it's software, but sensor is now installed.   We are going with the Elon Musk strategy of try it, let it run for a while, and lets see what breaks.   I like this strategy of taking positive risks.  


We have a bit more sculpting to do on the heart.  We are going to add some spray foam to the outside to make it a bit more uneven, and slope the top a bit more to more look like a "heart".


Lungs are much closer.   Couple little things we are going to fix up.  I'm hoping robotics can install the motor soon and we can do some testing.




More crew members are getting finished up.  We discussed weapons yesterday, so spears, axes, and swords will soon be happening.  We might need a surf board some where too.  We will see.


Castle stained glass looks pretty great!   She continues to make more and we will install them after the texture and paint.


We played with some lighting positions yesterday too.   We think we will have 4 lights mounted behind the wall to add some dramatic effects to the overall look of our castle.
Students drilled holes for power to our castle.




More 3D printed railings.   I'm impressed with how exact he got these to match the outside shape of our platform.  


All set up to spray.   I think we will get a little done today.   I had a student read all the directions on the sprayer yesterday and we talked about strategy of how to get angles for everything without hitting the train.


Transitions on the keel of the ghost bow are about ready for paint.


These are just press fit in right now.  We will remove them, cover them, then paint them before gluing them back in place.  We will also have front and back pieces.

Those stained glass windows are going to look great! One of the most remarkable components of these projects is the attention to detail, like the windows.