finished frog!

Well it's finally done and clear coated and ready for this summer's display downtown Midland. I hope the funny, happy light hearted theme of my frog will bring a smile to people's faces. The biggest question for people thus far is... what if someone takes the fly. The fly itself is REALLY stuck well on the sculpture but in the event that that happens I will be creating a different fly each occurance. I am not worried. It can be replaced.

Drop me a line/email/comment and let me know what you all think of the final sculpture.

water drops and the fly

Well I added some of the final touches to the sculpture... Some EPOXY water drops and the fly. I will get the project clear coated next week and see about adding more water drops. They kinda look cool but are difficult and costly to achieve. Once the whole thing is clear coated you will see the colors and drops pop off more.

after airbrushing

So today, Easter Sunday, I spent several hours airbrushing. It sure does add a lot of character to the frog. The crowning finally will be the fly, which has yet to be created. I also need to do more work on the eyes. All in all the frog is 95% done (without counting clear coating) I think I also want to mess with adding some "waterdrops" to the lillypad. Still thinking on that.. perhaps some type of epoxy. I am happy with how it is turning out. :)

um... excuse me!

Mellisa's cat, Dexter, took up residence on top of my frog. lol
Cats just have to be on top of everything!

frog painting!

Today I started paitning the frog, it's the first step. After the first coat I will detail more, shade more and then break out the airbrush. The airbrush is what will really give it the depth and detail that I am envisioning. (note: the lilly pad isn't colord yet.) I debated whether or not to do more frog realistic eyes, but then again I really wanted a cartoony look. And yes I still need to do the crowning FLY on the tongue. Also figured out it stands a little over 3ft today.

Camp Au Sable

Photos taken at last weekend's woman's retreat at Camp Au Sable,
in Grayling. The squirrel was a greta shot!

frog dissection

Well, I had to do some surgery today on the frog. After constructing the other arm yesterday I felt that the frog's left arm needed to come out and away from his body. I cut off the old arm and made a new one, looks much better now. More character. I have it propped up for drying.

We have an ARM!

We have a arm! If you haven't noticed the arm on the other side of the body is closer to the body.
Soon we can start painting!

cqgraphicdesign website

Well here it is! I crammed today to get my website done. In the midst of work for everyone else I have very little time for myself. Interesting factoid, I disliked doing my own site. Making decisions for myself tends to be the hardest. For those of you who have seen my past sites you will notice that I eliminated a bunch of things. I tried to slim down and class up. A crisp, clean new look. Drop me a line and let me know what you all think! Check it out HERE.

28 pounds!

Well today I ran out of apoxie, right now I have 28 lbs of Apoxie on the sculpture. I orderd more today to be able to finish the project. You can see I added a metal armature for the right arm. I uploaded the finished drawing again so you can get the full scope again. Obviously I decided to add one toe to each foot and hand, for a total on four.

frog sculpture progress

he is still missing HIS right ARM ( I need more apoxie)

Well hopefully you can kind of see how things are going to be put together. Try not to let the different colors distract you. Of course, once everything is painted it will come ALIVE... mwwwaahahaha, (that's my evil scientist laugh)
Ok seriously, I spent a good time today coating the bottom (not shown) of the pad today with Apoxie... I also had to construct the wooden inserts that will house the brackets for the installation. The city likes to be able to screw the base of the sculpture to concrete to prevent someone carrying the sculpture off. (It has happened).

working on the lilly pad

Working on the lilly pad today, and the bottom half of the frog. I think constructing the feet and the pad/while the frog is in place will be fun. Truly though, I can't wait until the painting aspect.
In the lillypad photo above I had to attach the two side pieces to the main pad, as I didn't have one "big chunk" of foam to deal with.

KIDS' TIME WEBSITE LAUNCH!

Launched today is the KIDS' TIME website! After lots of long hours, research, hard work and collaboration we were finally able to open it to the public! Check it out!
The greatest feature of the site is the ONLINE BIBLE STUDIES that are fully trackable and managed online. 52 Lessons in all. Mellisa helped out greatly by entering all 52 lessons into a quiz program which we purchased for this very thing. We are waiting to see how it goes over. The quizes are password protected. Each quiz needs to be taken in order of the lessons to receive the next password, and so on. Once completed the user then receives a FREE BIBLE and certificate. We are praying the Lord uses this site to further His kingdom. Without His help we could have never of completed the project. It took over 8 months of work. It will continually be a work in progress, always adding things, etc. We will also be running monthly contests for kids to enter. It's going to be great fun!

Enough is Enough!

Did you know that the estimated Michigan deer population for 2005 for the Saginaw Bay Area is 242,500! Well, yesterday I hit my 14th deer since 2001. Enough is enough! Shrug it off and move on. You can see all of my hits (except yesterdays) with the web page I dedicated to the ridiculousness of it all HERE.

Woah!

This was a shocker this weekend. I was expecting a byline in the paper not the front page and so huge! lol. Best I live up to the expectation now. LOL

Little known fact: I also redesigned the masthead for the paper just 2 weeks ago.