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Yesterday we had some great help from Sue Brinton and Nancy Gilman.  Sue did some fine detail painting on the Lady, and worked on the torch flame (no real flames for this Lady.)  Nancy helped spruce up the Vallejos and did the final detail painting on the tablet the Lady carries.  
In the meanwhile, more and more "boat people" are signing on, meaning a flotilla of boats must be constructed and fast!  Including boats for baby carriages!  Busy, busy.
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Sue paints the Lady's helmet.

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Torch painting detail.  Flames are next.

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Nancy gives Mariano Vallejo a manicure so he will look his best in the parade.

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"Give me your tired..."   Big Thanks to Nancy and Sue.

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With Valerie, Nancy, and Sue working on the "human" puppets, Michael headed off to the Mare Island Preserve Visitor Center to work on the currently headless horse, fine tuning the walking mechanism and discovering all kinds of stress points and trying to strengthen them with not enough time, and no electricity.  Today the horse gets moved to the parade route where it will wait in its "stable" until parade day.

 
The title says it all.  Today, besides all the gluing and drying, I started painting the head, made the sausage curls (she does have them!) and made some headway on the torch.  Photos below.
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Yet another day papier mache-ing (Jessie, who worked with us last year on the horse, is back, adding layers to the arms and head!)

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New knowledge:  Not only does papier mache shrink when it dries, but as it shrinks over styrofoam, certain parts of the foam compress whereas others do not do so as much, so the arms that I so lovingly carved into nice rounded shapes have morphed back into to blocky shapes.  They will look fine on the puppet but are not how I envisioned them.

 
Today was more papier mache-ing.  Thin layers dry fast in the warm Vallejo sun, so the work goes well.  Today I learned that papier mache shrinks when it dries.  Not a real problem for us, but interesting to know.
Thanks to Wallace for dropping in for a bit more papier macheing.


TENTATIVE SCHEDULE OF PUPPET CONSTRUCTION - (Just for fun:)
Mon, Tue, Wed. 
Finish papier mache-ing, start painting.  Start work on structure of puppet body
Thur. Fri:
Costume begins, detail work, torch
Sat:
Finish puppet to 90-95% mark.


In the meanwhile, I will get the giant horse head and legs from the Mare Island Visitor Center and bring them to the studio to work on and repair.  (Don't know about the horse?  Check it and the other giants out at http://magicalmoonshine.org/giantpuppet.htm )


Saturday and perhaps Sunday will be big work days.
 
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The Papier Mache crew goes to work on the arms and head.  Wallace (above) and Michael (left) add the SF Chronicle and Vallejo Times Herald to the lady (no NY Times here!)  It looks like my carved foam with its paper skin will work!
Meanwhile I work on the hands...always hard.


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Papier Mache parts, hung out in the wind to dry.  Shown here:  an arm part and the spikes for the helmet!  The plan is to velcro on the spikes so if they happen to hit something they will velcro off rather than tear or break off...a safety release, as it were.  The work continues tomorrow!

 
Update on the giant Lady Liberty that will appear in the 2010 Vallejo July 4 parade, along with the giants from previous years.  
The head has been sculpted by Michael in clay.  Figure 1 below shows the wood, wire and styrafoam armature for the head modeling.  Photos of the original were used to sculpt the head in water based clay (figure 2.)  (Scroll down the blog to an earlier entry for a scale drawing showing the size and scale of the finished puppet.)
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The actual liberty statue has a stern expression, captured here in clay.  She takes "liberty" very seriously!

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After the head was modeled, it was cast in traditional plaster of paris, and the resulting mold was used to make the positive in thermo-plastic mesh.  Parts of the thermo plastic (the skin) are shown here with a layer of papier mache, which will later be painted.  The hair portions will be left as the visible mesh, to give it a hair like texture.  Thanks to Valerie and Jessie Horack for the first papier mache work on June 17!

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For the arms, I am trying a refinement of my giant arms from previous years.  In General Vallejo (2007) and Benicia (2008), the arms were made of scavenged styrafoam (from furniture store packing.)  They were roughly carved and reinforced with a bamboo rod through them, making them strong and very light.  In both the Vallejos' cases, the arms were covered, so they only had to be roughly arm shaped.  With the lady Liberty I am going to try to create a more refined arm shape in styrafoam, and then papier mache the arms where the skin is visible.  Shown is arm number one, the experimental arm, to see how this technique might work.  So far it looks promising.