In Action

 

Progress

The top picture is how the day started out, and the bottom was how it ended, so there is progress. I think the calibration was wrong for the first print (the blue and white fellow in the back). I reset everything and then decided to print these two little Benchy Boats. On the first try, the white one was going fine, but the blue one...not so much. I just happened to look at the back of the machine and noticed that the blue spool of filament was all twisted up. (I forgot to take a picture!) I fixed it, and the boats printed really well. But now, I'm not sure whether the problem was the calibration or the spool, darn it. I'll try the little head again next. If that works, I'll move on to printing Roxy's fingers :)

 

Fail

Well, when this little video was taken at the start of the print, I had high hopes I would get a flawless test print, and I'd be on my way. Four hours later, it came off the pate in two pieces, as a result of the printing getting really thin, or not adhering properly to the previous layers. You can sort of tell how it should look in the bottom photo. I think the trouble might have been in the calibration, so I reset everything. I'll give it another try on Wednesday. I always have to do things more than once, so I'm right on schedule :)

 

 

Blessed are the YouTubers

 Well, that user manual is pretty tricky to figure out. Luckily for me, the are some awesome YouTubers who have made some wonderful videos that are helping to explain things a little better (with video illustrations). Here is a shoutout to 3DPrinting Professor and Partsbuilt 3D. Both helped me to figure out how the heck to start with the Creator Max 2. The printer is all calibrated, leveled and ready to go. It'll take about 4 hours to make a test print, and I am hoping to give it a go tomorrow.

FlashForge Creator Max 2

And, here it is! It's pretty much assembled, and next, I will turn it on and go through the calibration instructions. Below is an example from the instruction manual. 

Wish me luck.

 

Two new ones

'Yes, I'm actually starting two paintings. At once. It'll probably take me a year to get them done. Shall we take bets?

 These are the life size scans I'm using to transfer the images to canvas. I'm so lazy. In the past, I would have gridded the whole thing out and transferred the drawing square by square. I let Photoshop do the the walking on this one. This is a real size version of the thumbnail in my sketchbook.

     When my beautiful son, who is right now setting sail on the path of his dream, was a youngster, we shared a bathroom. So every morning before school, we had a moment at the mirror. Now that he is off and running, those moments are becoming more precious. 

This one will be a bit of a repeat, because I loaned this painting out and probably won't get it back. So, I'm going to do it again, but take the opportunity to re-work the faces and colors. Again, I am grateful to Photoshop, because I'd just as soon not have to figure out all of the perspective again.

 

3D Journey

    Even though it is summer break, it has been a busy time at a the Creative Arts Center. First, the Physical Plant gods decided that the floor in the largest classroom, vintage '60's asbestos tile, was dangerous and had to go. That meant everything in the room except large furniture had to be stowed. That classroom was my former colleague's, and let's just say organization was not his strong suit. So, I took a week and re-organized in the process of cleaning out all the student shelves and work. And it kind of spread to the whole building.

    In the process, the AV equipment in the room was re-evaluated and the result of the ancient status of the equipment and funds that were leftover in the department because nobody spent money during COVID was that we will soon have a new projector and screen, two document cameras and a portable light for lighting still life set-ups. 

   Best of all, thrown into the deal was funding for a 3D scanner and printer, both of which I've been working with this week.

     This is a Sol 3D Scanner. It came with a little rubber Duckie to practice with. It will scan the object up to five times in different positions, and then it meshes all of the scans together to form a coherent image. Each position gets ten passes of the scanner, so if you scan the object five times in different positions, there will be 50 passes in all.

  This pile of goo is the result of my first try. The scanner has a black tent and cloth that serves as a small darkroom for the machine while it is scanning. I'm pretty sure there was some light sneaking in so that the scanner was reading the round platform as part of the object.

My second attempt was much more successful. I was able to save the file in the Photoshop 3D program. If I can manage to figure out how that works, I will be able to alter the shape of the object before saving it to print. I'm thinking about giving Duckie a unicorn horn, if I can manage it.
 

This is going to be fun.

Improv 2.1

 I played around with this again this morning, because I wasn't happy with the center of the drawing. This is the original orientation, which I rotated in the last post. It's still not exactly what I was after. I will try again.

Improv 2

To tell the truth, I'm not sure which way this drawing should be oriented. It started out as a pretty figurative thumbnail in my sketchbook, but little by little, it morphed into something that has only the bare bones of the original design. I think the reason I chose this orientation to post is that it's harder to see those original elements from this view.

 

Improv

Once, during a critique in grad school, the prof wondered why I shared myself so much in my work. I thought it was a strange question, because I don't know how else to make it.

   But lately, I've been tired of image. I think that is the hold up with my work right now. I'm tired of hearing my own voice, I think.

   Yesterday, I started out refining the lines of a drawing in my sketchbook that is a bit of a portrait of a dear friend who seems to be changing before my eyes. It didn't take too long for me to lose interest in it, because it was such a literal translation of that idea. 

   After a while I closed the book and decided to play with charcoal for a bit. Normally, I use charcoal reductively, which produces a very dark chiaroscuro effect. I'd intended to do that this time, but because I was testing out the suitability of the paper, the test shapes I put down began to look like elements from the drawing I'd just been working on. It was really freeing, because this drawing has the elements of the literal one in my sketchbook, but it also has the energy that the literal one lacked.