Seeing Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I'm pleased to say I'm approaching the finish line on my Skull Island cavern project.

One of the remaining tasks to complete was creating some loose rocks for the interior.

Whenever I'm working with Apoxie clay, mache or wood putty I will always make up rocks with any surplus material.

The collection of these rocks in the above photo on the left are textured to look like marine rocks. The batch to the right are more like ordinary rocks. Sometimes I'll add a stick into the rock as a handle for when it comes time to paint them. For my skull island rocks I cobbled together a few of these leftovers, added some carved styrofoam and finished molding them with Apoxie Sculpt clay.

By modeling these rocks by hand using the same technique to texture the clay that I had on the cavern I achieved a good match.

Here are the finished rocks painted and sprayed with Dullcote.

I thought I'd celebrate nearing completion on this project by having a nice seafood dinner!

After picking my wife up at work we drove to the nautical mile in Freeport.

The Nautical Mile Fish Markets

My favorite fish market on the mile is Capt. Ben's. While there I bought some salmon fillets, shrimp and a dozen Little Neck clams.

For our dinner I made salmon cakes, spaghetti with white clam sauce and garlic shrimp. My wife made a green salad and a toasted garlic bread with melted mozzarella cheese. That bread was soooo good!

My Wife Thinks She's Annie Leibovitz

I'm beginning to think there is more to this Mars vs Venus concept then I first thought. At least when it comes to taking pictures at our house.

I'm a point and shoot kind of guy. While my wife Diane tends to spend a great deal of time over each of her pictures.

For this reason I tend to score a lower irritant factor when brandishing a camera at social events then she does. My intended subjects know I'm going to snap a quick shot and keep moving.

Diane on the other hand likes to take multiple shots. She'll have people change places. "You over here". "You stand next to so and so". That sort of thing.

I have no problem with her approach to photography -- unless I'm the subject! For example this past weekend I asked her to take a picture for my blog of me standing next to the miniature cave I'm making. I wanted to show the size of it. It was a very hot day - 94 degrees in the shade.

She fiddled around taking shot after shot while I'm literally starting to do a slow burn in the sun. Then she chides me for not smiling!

Better yet was the time last summer when we were walking the beach taking pictures during an extremely rough sea with huge waves for this area. We were experiencing wave heights of 10 to 15 feet! To give you and idea of how large the surge was take a look at this photo of one of the life guard chairs.

These chairs are set out well above the usual high tide mark. They are also surrounded my a mound of sand right up to just under the chair seat. The water had washed away the mound and was beginning to drag the chair out to sea!

In this shot you can see one of the local surfers with a large wave breaking above him.

Diane decides if I went out a bit into the water it would give viewers of the pictures an idea of the size of the waves.

I look at her like shes crazy but she keeps at me. Okay I venture out a few steps and turn towards the camera. Oh no she says I need you a little further out!

I take a few more paces out and I'm starting to really feel the strength of the current pulling at me. She wants me out further! I'm starting to feel like the Chief in Jaws when Hopper is taking photos and wants him at the end of the boats pulpit to give the shark some scale. A breaking comber nails me and I'm soaked and not a happy camper. As Diane is lining up her perfect shot a large wave and comber are lining me up!

Just out of camera view to my left is a rock jetty where all the water rushing back out to sea had created a nasty rip current. I got out of there in a hurry!

So if I ever post a picture of me on my blog and I'm not grinning from ear to ear you know who the photographer was!

Cavern Work In Progress

Now that I had created my cavern ceiling using resin and chopped fiberglas cloth it was time to begin covering it in Apoxie Sculpt clay.

After mixing up a batch of parts A & B of the clay I apply a thin veneer of it to the cavern ceiling working it down onto the walls of the cave.

I can't work too large of an area at a time because I have to impart a rocky texture to the clay before it begins to set up.

This photo is of the entrance to the cavern. It is made of hardware cloth and styrofoam board.

After adding a layer of mache I covered it in Apoxie Sculpt clay. I find the mache closes the pores of the styrofoam board otherwise I keep getting loose particles of styrofoam as I apply the Apoxie.

An added benefit is it bulks up the piece without the added weight ( and expense ) of a thick layer of Apoxie clay.

This photo shows the finished cave entrance painted with acrylics and placed in its position on the plywood base. I now begin building up the rest of the cliff face which will eventually be joined to the entrance.

Here is one of the supports for the interior of the cave. It shows the wood frame, styrofoam board and veneer of Apoxie Sculpt.

This is a close up photo of the rock texture of one of the supports.

I hope to get a great deal of work done today before the heat and humidity return later in the week!