So, this may be more at home in Creations, but it fitted better with the other topics, in here (Yes I like it when line lengths match up >_>)

What are you currently making? I know there are some very creative people out there in Matazone, and I wondered what your current projects are? Whether you're doing some programming, knitting, painting, or planning a party- what are you doing?

At the moment, I am using watercolours and acrylics and painting pictures. Once dry, I am writing Spike Milligan poems over the top, and on a couple I have added comic cut-outs.
I had to overcome the hurdle of drawing a shrugging Walrus. Do Walrusses shrug?!

(Also, this thread is sort of relevant. What media are you using? Yeah. Words )

I built a castle at work today. Someone randomly chucked a sheet of bendy cardboard at me so naturally I sellotaped it around a box of tea, drew on a portcullis and brickwork, added crennelations and a flag to the top. Currently my plush Cthulhu is perched atop it.

It's facing off against another castle a few desks over, that one even has its own trebuchet.

Tomorrow I shall take photos.

A few days ago I happened across this:

I'm about a third of the way through writing a playable version of it, just because I liked the paper and doodle style graphics.

Too many things! I tend to have a billion projects going at once, and rarely complete them before moving onto the next.

Sewing: covers for the couches, cushions, a bag for snoo, finishing a bag for me, curtains for the spare room, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting.

Painting: acrylics...mostly funny silly stuff to hang around out house. Haven't done anything serious for awhile. Next up is a picture of a toilet monster for the bathroom, and I've also got a random urge to paint a Jabberwocky.

Many things!

Musically, I'm working on a large piano tone poem about Thor, the Norse thunder-God. Also writing a short classical-style piece for string quartet because school demands it.

Artistically, I'm making a large painting on canvas (not sure what size) of Witless to complete an art project on 'mood portrait', in which his face has been so useful!

With sewing I'm making a sixties-style pinafore dress in white material with lime green lining for a friend.

Aaand, that's about it for now.

Oh yes, and I'm also painting the bathroom ceiling because it was all moldy. Yummaayyy.

My castle
And in situ
Sarah's castle - the competitiion
Face off
My trebuchet - currently in the wrong place

Eggie in a basket?

Forgive me, it's five in the morning. And I thought this thread was about food.

It can be

Last night, I made a really yummy Sweet potato, Butternut squash and coconut curry, and apple crumble with custard for pudding.

I love Autumn food.

It's good to see that they're keeping you busy at work!

I'm currently making my Halloween animation for this year. It's taking ages, so I'm really having to rush now to get it done in anything close to a reasonable amount of time.

I've just made my CV again, because it looks like I'm going to be made redundant in about a month

There's a painting that I've been fiddling with for a while. I decided to make a mock-up version of it in Photoshop before I painted it. This is good because it gave me lots of time to fiddle with the composition (something that usually happens as I go along) but it's taken some of the excitement out of it because I already have a pretty good idea what the final piece will look like!

Also, there's the ongoing project of a novel that I will get back to once I've done the animation. Crikey. I'm a busy chappie.

I'm currently writing a song cycle for tenor and string quartet for my studio classes. It's fun. I'm using a pandiatonic texture for the first movement and the text is all from Shel Silverstein. I'm also doing some last minute editing of a violin sonata which will be premiered in November (!) and reworking a bassoon sonata because my friends want to take it into the studio and record it for my portfolio (I have the best friends.) I've also started sketches of my counterpoint project, but I don't really know how that's going to work out.

I've also got an idea for some sort of literary work in my head. It was originally going to be a short story, but I'm thinking it'll be good fodder for NaNoWriMo which, at the time of this post, is but a scant four days away.

I feel I should comment on this just because. Any chance of hearing the finished product?

Sure. I've got Finale midi files as well as the original premier mp3s. I just don't know how to go about uploading it.

Food wise it's vegtable platters and homemade soup to try to encourage people to eat around here.

The fun project that's bubbling in the back of my head is to make old fashioned elastic guns. A friend from England is coming to Vancouver in the spring and I told him we'd go hunt down a good restaurant and voila. Well, we'll need hunting equipment, yes?

Doesn't look like I'll be exercising creativity with a pumpkin. Anyone carving a particularly fine jack'o' lantern that they could share pics of?

*dances about like a crazy thing* I'll be making a lantern! I'm also going to attempt one from a parsnip. Because... well... I couldn't find a turnip.
Tea shall also be made tonight, and I am going to make my Hallowe'en costume for our party on Saturday!

MEEEEEEEEPS!

Lanterns should not be made from kittens! Even ones that are called Parsnip!

Er.. to make this a little less spammy, I shall also be making a costume for beccles's party on saturday. And by making I mean finding all the bits for, there is no actual "making" involved.

Ohh... but all I need to do is poke out her eyes and put a candle in her mouth et voilá! Jack O' Parsnip.
Perhaps I'll just stick to my pumpkin. That I didn't carve. Cause I'm waiting until the weekend so it will be fresh for the party

At the weekend, I was given an 1937 Singer Treadle Sewing machine. I have cleaned up all the tarnished metal on it, had a fiddle and now think that I can start sewing with it! So I am going to make myself a dress for a party on Saturday out of Ikea children's duvet sets.

What? They have sea creatures on >_>
I may even have a play with one of the many many different foot attachments.

I just finished and presented a video for RE (religious education) class yesterday about me drumming! Everyone was impressed. And I felt happy with myself (which is kind of the point, because we're doing work on 'self esteem' now). ;-)

Currently maing a dot animation project about Thanksgiving for my gifted studies class.

Still don't know how it's going to go, but right now it looks like we're gonna have a guitar-plaiyng turkey with pilgrims dancing to it.

What's dot animation?

This week I made a couple of masks for a masquerade ball Sues and I went to.





We bought a couple of very, very basic masks then I used papier-mâché to built up the shape of mine. I built a basic structure for the nose from card, then rounded it out with the papier-mâché. Top tip: use diluted PVA glue to do papier-mâché, about 50:50 glue to water works okay, but not more water than that. PVA gives a nice flexible result at the end, and it doesn't begin to smell after a while like traditional papier-mâché does when it's made with flour. Sues' one also had a covering of papier mache to give it a smooth surface. That took a couple of hours. Once that was done it took about two hours to paint and decorate Sues' mask, and another hour to paint mine.

Decorating them: I used acrylic paints on both masks. Sues' had a thick layer of white to cover the newsprint, then I used masking tape to get nice clean lines for the chequer-board effect. I then used a silver pen for the swirls on it. My mask had a thick layer of black as a base coat, then a medium layer of red paint of over the top. I then used charcoal to emphasise the contours of the mask. I sealed in the charcoal with PVA glue, which smudges and blends it a bit too. I repeated this step twice to get the depth of shadow that I was looking for. Once they were both painted I then applied a final thick-ish layer of PVA glue to give them a smooth and shiny surface.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out!

Love the masks, Mata. I'd bet you and Sues were the bells of the ball. Sues's looks like it took a lot of work and energy indeed, but they both came out lovely!

---

Still working on my Shel Silverstein song cycle for tenor and string quartet. Finished what looks like the third movement of my song cycle (though it is the first I wrote.) It's a setting of Silverstein's "Rain" and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. If anyone wants to tell me how I could go about posting a score online sans the use of a digital camera (for I am without) and how to post audio, I'd be happy to show everyone.

I've now moved on what's going to be the second movement of the piece, a setting of "Where the Sidewalk Ends." I'm more nervous about this one because the text is one of my favorite poems. However, it's started off well - I'm using a somewhat quartal harmony and copious ammounts of counterpoint to make it sound like plain-chant meets samba.

And for my non-studio classes, I've started a fugue for my counterpoint final project and have to arrange two pieces for orchestration: the famous c-minor dirge by Chopin for brass quintet and a Brahms intermezzo for full orchestra.

And I have to write a paper on the history of composition for history class on Monday. Isn't life grand?

Thanks Mike, I was very happy with them

If you want to put things online so we can listen (and I'd love to hear what you're working on) then there are loads of free file hosting places, as long as you're not too bothered about the file being online forever. Here's one that I found through google: http://4filehosting.com/

Yesterday I made a very yummy, moist and rich chocolate cake with fudge icing, and an apple, cinnamon and ginger cake as well.
I keep forgetting to get any bananas when I make chocolate cake- because the cocoa can sometimes leave the cake quite dry, putting a mashed up banana into the mix keeps it moist and a bit more dense.

I also recently did some painty doodles in my sketchbook, and one that I was pleased with is this. The poem is Being You by Spike Milligan and the pink writing is something I found in a comic book. Yes I buy comic books to cut up >_>

I guess that's better than not buying them and still cutting them up... Nice pic. Collage is a fantastic medium, I use it loads when I'm making pictures. It really pushes you to work on your sense of composition.

I am making plastic people tonight, as I have just learned today that I may be failing my independent study art class. Later this evening, I may be able to post pictures, if people are curious and would like to see--but either way I will drink non-decaf coffee and stay up too late with the sound of packing tape ringing in my ears.

I'd like to see!

Something that I did in an art class years ago about the figure was pretty cool:

You'll need newspaper, a hot-glue gun, strong scissors

Get loads of newspaper, and roll the sheets up into tubes about half an inch thick (this can be fairly approximate)
Sellotape all the way along the edge
Build a tetrahedron - that's a three sided pyramid - about a foot in height
Inside and around the frame, begin sticking on the tubes of paper to build up a figure - having the chest in the middle of the tip of the pyramid is probably best
Start with a really basic tube wo/man
Put in pieces that are not parallel with the edges of the body and cut off anything that isn't needed - for example you might add a piece going directly through the chest but cut it so it's only an inch long to fit with the proper contour.

It takes about an hour or two, but you end up with a really interesting form made up of all kinds of unusual angles but very recognisably human.

It's where you take a picture or something, move it, take another picture, and so on. If done right, it turns out really cool.

Ah, I've never heard it called that before. It used to be called stop-frame animation. I wonder where that new name came from? I was really into the idea of making that kind of thing when I was a kid, but I never had the equipment to do it. The VHS age sucked for that kind of thing - Super 8 worked well, and digital cameras are a godsend for animators, but in the middle there wasn't anything too good for the mainstream. Thankfully Flash came along in the end and took my troubles away!

Last night, I made a very delicious lasagne. And the night before that, I managed to feed four on: two packets of ready-cooked noodles, tahini, an onion, some ginger, 5 grated carrots and a stock cube. It was amazing- both tasty AND odd.

Mata, I don't know where the name came from either. My teacher found this dot origami thing, and started calling it that. *shrug*

*bump*

This art project is kicking my ass, so I thought I'd post pictures of the stuff that's coming out OK as a sort of self-encouragement, or self-lighting-fire-under-ass-ism.

(Oof. We have passed the realm of words.)

(The concept is to make mock-ups of "modern" structures using very earthy materials, and "primitive" structures using modern-looking materials.)

Anyway, if you'd like to see how it's coming, click here.

Cool, but it needs more wattle and daub. Or just mud, would do

I really really love this one. I have a thing about using wood and metal, and if it wasn't for the real world, I would live and manage my own forest and make sculptures with the trees and copper sheeting.
I hated how, when I was doing art at sixth form, the art teachers would get us to do a project, and everyone's results would be the same as the teachers would give them "suggestions" and "tips". I think I got bad grades in art because I ignored their suggestions.

My current project is based on a dream I had in spring of 2006. I had lots of things on my mind, and one night I had such a vivd dream: I was out in my garden, and all these birds had landed on the grass. They were all black, almost silhouetted, versions of lots of different kinds of birds. There were crows, seagulls, blackbirds, robins, thrushes, eagles, sparrows, even my chickens were in there, black. I was running around the garden, flapping my arms at them and trying to get them off the ground but I just couldn't- they wouldn't move.

So I am currently making those birds. My first one has a wingspan of 2 metres and is made with a twig skeleton, held together with string, and has an outer body of black crumpled binliners. Its beak is twigs wrapped in the same plastic bags, and its body is slightly stuffed with plastic bags. I'll post some pictures when I have made more. They are going to be flying around the ceilling of our study.

EDIT- Elphaba, I have just noticed that it isn't metal, it's bits of broken mirror on your sculpture. Awesome.

A programmatic piece for symphony orchestra about the Paper Gardens! Fun things.

Editing the Afro-Latino institute opening for the Afro-Latino institute, I feel bad my friend and I filmed it back in September and I'm just now finally getting it together.

When I was last at my parents' house, I picked up my treasure box and my sewing box. My treasure box has ribbons, threads, sequins, beads, stones, wire, pliers, jewelry fastenings, scraps of fabric, chicken wire, needles, pins.. and the list goes on. My sewing box is more of the same but with an ongoing patchwork project taking up most of the space inside. I have missed them both as they have little bits of forgotten projects and scraps of paper with ideas on. So, last night, after a day of feeling utterly horrible and lethargically ill, I decided to pick up my pliers and start fiddling with the wire. This is what was made:
From the side and from the front. It's not anything massively special, but it made me feel good as I haven't had any time recently to spend on creative things.

Nov thinks it looks like a dolphin on its back, playing guitar.

Aww, that's cute!

I've been rather remiss at making stuff lately. I've not had the time, or sometimes the motivation, to pick up tools and get creative. I'm working on a bit of webdesign, but otherwise there's just a painting that has been sitting waiting for me to return to it for the last couple of months.

The painting will look something like this when it's done:

http://matazone.co.uk/sillyimages/geisha-full.jpg

(That's a huge version because I wanted a big printout to work from.)

It's the first time that I've mocked up the image before painting so I could fiddle with the composition without having to entirely re-think the whole thing. I'm not sure, but I think it might have taken some of the fun from the creation, because I already know roughly what it's going to look like when it's done.