Sculpture completed: Flying Hulls!

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Tom Harold

I have been waiting forever and a day to post this for you:

Flying Hulls, a rolling ball sculpture customized to the client’s wishes based on a passion for sailing.

I’ve had to sit on this for about two months now! This rolling ball sculpture commission was created as a Christmas gift for a spouse. The two share a passion for sailing, and I was excited about this the moment the client asked, “Can you do something shaped like a sailboat?” Yes! Yes, I can!

Themed pieces can be very challenging, but they also allow me to stretch out and force me to think in different ways. I could immediately imagine designing a frame shaped like a sailboat, and once the client emailed me a photo of their catamaran I knew it would be perfect.

The overall design took careful consideration of the appropriate number, size and shape of the sales as well as the placement of the mast. These are details that I feel are extremely important, as I believe the client will get a greater amount of enjoyment from a work that more closely matches their own vessel. In addition, I curved the outer edges of the sail so that they look as if they are filled with air.

Of course, a catamaran with its sails filled is hardly sitting still. One of the wonderful things the client provided for me as part of my initial research was a video of them on the boat sailing it. I learned from that their practice of “flying hulls,” where the boat only has one of its twin hulls in the water at a time, leaned over from the force of a strong wind, jetting along at speed.

Once I had that image in my head I couldn’t get it out, and the idea of placing the frame of the boat level was just not going to do. I had to make it more dynamic. I had to give it visual motion even as it sat still! I decided I would kick up the frame as I had seen, leaning it up on a single hull. It required a bit more work, yes, but it looks so much better!

I suppose I could go one forever about the creation of it, but I tend to get a little wrapped up in what I do. There were many fun and even frustrating challenges in creating this piece, but it turned out wonderfully, and I was given a wonderful Christmas gift in return: a video of the new owner opening up his present on Christmas day! It was SO cool to see his face as he opened the box!

Now I’ll let you all take a look at it in action! Thanks for reading, and if you do enjoy the video, please give it a thumbs up on Youtube and/or a comment. I greatly appreciate your support!

Tillander – Another Rolling Ball Sculpture Completed!

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Tom Harold

It’s amazing, and it’s finished!!!!

I love to be able to announce that I’ve completed another rolling ball sculpture! There are a lot of feelings that come with finishing a new work: gratitude, happiness, pride, relief, maybe a bit of loss, and I don’t know what all else. That gratitude thing, though, that’s a big one. When I was younger I was often so afraid the finished piece would not be “good enough,” not be perfect, that I never finished it. I didn’t even see my problem for what it was. I’d just get to a point where I was anywhere between 50% and maybe even 90% of the way done with something, and I’d put it down and never quite get back to it.

In my high school art class I got lower grades than I should have simply because a lot of my work was not complete when I handed it in. There were even plenty of projects – art and otherwise – that I never started or took part in because I was afraid my end result would not be good enough. I missed out on a lot that way. The fear of what I perceived as failure was powerful in those days. Eventually, however, I got sick and tired of things, and I desired a change badly enough that I started doing things differently.

That was several years ago, and I still have a good perspective on my old way of (not) doing things versus how I choose to live now. I’ve realized that my perceived ruinous flaws were just poor perspective. I still do the best I can at all times, but now I don’t create impossible standards for myself. Allowing myself to be human allows me to get more work done, which, in turn, allows me to improve even more. Every time I finish a piece of art now it becomes another fabulous and concrete way of physically telling myself, “You’re not living that way anymore. You’ve made changes, and look at how awesome this is!”

Tillander is a wonderful piece of art that stands as further proof that there are big benefits in casting aside a belief in perfectionism. I’m so happy to be scheduling delivery of this piece to my clients! They had the idea to put the air plant terrariums in the sculpture. I thought it was an absolutely kickass idea, so much so that I named the sculpture after the scientist who discovered the plant type. The terrarium idea wound up creating a number of challenges during construction, but I dealt with them one by one, perfectionism be damned, and I think the result really is fantastic. The green of the plants reaching out from inside the twisting, shiny metal really has a wonderful effect, and the round glass spheres of the terrariums complement the curving paths of the marbles perfectly.

Below I present a video of the completed piece. If this piece inspires some thoughts for a rolling ball sculpture that you’d like to commission for your home or office, please click here and send me a message. I’d love to hear your ideas!

“Lunar Walk” new sculpture completed with video!

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Tom Harold

It has been a very full day for yours truly, but the sculpture video must be posted before another moment passes! Especially this one, because it is a bit of a departure for me in some ways. You’ll see what I mean, and I’m sure you’re going to check it out!

I have been trying to keep the price of this series of sculptures right around $200, but Lunar Walk just begged for a little extra treatment, and I had to do it right. It’s slightly higher at $300, but still a very reasonable office piece and well worth all the effort I put into it. Do you know anyone else who has something like this? No! And you very likely won’t anytime soon either. Now how cool is that?

I’ll let the video speak for itself. I do hope you enjoy it. I loved the creative stretching this piece afforded me. Oh, and take special note of that crescent moon frame as well as the relaxed pace of the action, both characteristics for which this piece was named.

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“Opportunity” Rolling Ball Sculpture Completed!

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Tom Harold

It has taken me nearly a year and a half to create, but my largest, most ambitious rolling ball sculptured, “Opportunity,” is finally complete! A commission received back in November of 2011 started the whole project moving. Since it was of a size and scope that I’d not tackled before, I had to make some adjustments. I had to tear out a shower that someone had built in my basement back in the 60s. I had to install more shop lighting. I had to build a wooden frame onto which I could mount the sculpture as I built it. There was a lot of work to be done before any work got done!

Finally, however, it got down to the real sculpture work, and I learned how to square a frame and how to weld a frame without having it tweak itself out of alignment. That was the barest tip of the iceberg in all the learning experiences I had with this piece, and some of them felt extremely unpleasant. I’m the wiser for it, however, and even when things seemed at their worst, even when I welded something on and then hated it and wanted to tear it off (friends said leave it alone, so I did, and they were right), I kept moving forward and the end result is nothing short of fantastic!

This piece is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to build when I first laid eyes on Eddie Boes’ “Island Exploration” video. It’s the sort of work I’ve been dying to do even when I was first learning on copper at my dining room table. I was able to push myself farther, create more, show the world more of what I am capable of building than with anything previous. And you know what? I’ve still barely scratched the surface. This one is wonderful, and I am happy and proud to have completed it, but if you think I’m going to rest on my laurels, well, you couldn’t be more wrong.

The response to this video has, in the space of hardly a week, been outstanding for me personally. Over 1,000 views already, and it hasn’t stopped! Please take a look, share it with friends and add a comment if you like. It would be a big help toward me pursuing my art and creating even grander pieces.

Bring on the progress!

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Tom Harold

Back in June I looked at the calendar and had a horrible and depressing realization. The year was half over and I’d written not one single new story yet. I was pretty displeased, because writing is one of the big things I’ve been focusing on in my life over the past couple of years. Although, up until June of 2011, it seemed clearly that writing was only one of the things I’d been talking about focusing on, because there sure wasn’t any writing going on!

I was bereft, or at least rather put out about the whole state of affairs. Something had to be done. Here I’ve been wanting to write fiction so much, been talking about it, been reading it, and yet I hadn’t been DOING it! What can be done in such a situation? Let’s think that over for about two seconds. Oh, I know! How about, you know, writing!

Once I made that gigantic mental leap it was just a matter of getting the work done, sitting down and moving my fingers and making something happen on the screen/page. Right about this time I was reading the blog of Alex J. Kane, a burgeoning science fiction writer who has been making an honest and concrete effort to get his work out into the market. Alex made note of a web site by a writer named Dean Wesley Smith, and some of the thoughts he related of Smith’s seemed very positive and progress-oriented, so I went there and read some of Smith’s writing on the subject.

To cut things short, Smith was very energizing. He basically just said, “Write, then submit it! That’s it!” There was obviously a little bit more to it than that, but really not much, and when you get right down to it, those are the two steps needed for getting published: write story, submit story.

In view of this I decided that what I wanted was to have a bunch of finished short stories to my credit, and by a bunch, I mean something farther up there in the double digits. I already have a handful, maybe ten or so, but I wanted to add greatly to that number. I wanted to prove, I wanted to make it plainly, ridiculously obvious, that not only do I want to write fiction as a large part of my life, but that I’m not hesitant at all about doing the work to make that happen.

Beginning around the middle of July I started writing, just as Smith instructed. I didn’t sit around and worry over each sentence, each paragraph, each period, adjective, verb, and on and on until I worried myself to a halt. What I started doing was writing. Writing whole sentences, paragraphs, beginnings, endings, whole stories! And then I sent them out. I didn’t worry about having sixteen of my most perceptive writer friends pick them apart so that they shone brighter than polished stainless steel. I just made sure they didn’t have any horrible spelling or grammar errors and the like, made them look the best I figured I could make them at that point, and fired them off.

The goal is to write one new short story per week for the remainder of this year. I want to be able to say that I have at least 25 new short stories to my name by the end of the year. (I’ll fit in an extra somewhere to bring the total up.) So far it has been, well, work! But it’s fun work. I’m really enjoying it. It’s not always easy, but somehow I’m learning something, someTHINGS. I may not be known or admired or even have much of anything published by the time this effort is done (wouldn’t feel bad to have a sale or two, though), but I will have gotten better at writing, and maybe my December something will change, maybe I’ll sell to a pro market, or maybe I’ll just be writing stuff that’s still not so publishable, but is a lot closer to being publishable.

They say it takes a million written words for a writer to sharpen their instrument, hone themselves into a writer’s writer. I want that million words. I’ve written three novels in NaNoWriMo over the past three years. That’s far more than the 150K words that each year’s 50K minimum would put me at. I’m probably around 200K from that alone, maybe even 225K. Then we have the other short stories I’ve written since 2007. That gets me closer, maybe to 240K. That’s nearly halfway to 500K, and Smith said he started seeing some positive results at 500K. I’m nearly halfway there, and if we figure I’m writing stories that average about 4K each week, then by December I’ll have something like 340K (the last story actually went to 8K, so I may well go over).

So here we go, kids. It’s time to stop fooling around just talking about writing and make the writing happen. It is going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out, don’t you think?

Results!

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Tom Harold

I’ve been away so long that I thought I’d pulled up an incorrect enry at the home page! I went, “No, I’ve posted since NaNo. Where is that post on sculpture… Uh… It’s… Not…here…anywhere!”

Man, it has been too long! I guess the day after NaNo ended I pretty much jumped right back into sculpture work. That didn’t let up for over two weeks, as it was a piece for a client. Following that, well, you get the holidays and all that craziness, and here we are, January, and not a post to show for over a month! Honestly, though, I was sure that about a week ago I’d posted something. I’ll just have to take care of that right this minute.

The following piece is one I worked on all through 2010. There were a lot of “off” periods where I just had many other things going on and wasn’t able to sit down at the work bench and put time into it. However, I did manage to complete this one for a client in California. Sadly, it was not until some weeks after I mailed it off that I realized I didn’t take one single decent picture of it once it was completed. These are a couple that give you a nice idea of the finished product, if in a rather informal setting.

In the above photo I was doing some testing before I finally mounted the sculpture to the base. I thought this one turned out nicely. I have to thank my dad for the gorgeous wood base he created for it. It all came together quite nicely.

Here’s something of a “before” shot. I was cleaning up the sculpture, getting all the flux residue off of it and prepping for the final cleaning. It had just been scrubbed down in the sink, which is why it has water droplets all over it.

I was very happy with this one, and pleased to say that the client enjoyed it too. I have another for you coming up before much longer. It was an extremely busy holiday season, but I managed to squeeze another one in with lots of late nights and a little extra coffee.

NaNoWriMo 2010, Day Thirty: DONE!

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Tom Harold

I made it, kids! It was an uneven, weird, at times exhausting month, but I made it. I screeched into home plate, keyboard smoking at about 1:30pm or so this afternoon with a grand total of 53,212 words!

I’m not sure how I managed to wrap the whole thing up today, because last night when I sat down at 7:30 it seemed like I had a LOT left to write. However, by 10:20 a bunch of weird and unexpected things had happened to my characters, and the story seemed on the verge of wrapping itself up! Today I sat down with the intent of just adding some words to the count in preparation for the “real” writing session this evening, and an hour later I sat back and went, “Hey – HEY! I’m…I’M DONE!”

Man, another year of NaNo, and another novel. It’s pretty freaking obvious that I’m capable of actually mechanically assembling enough words to write a novel. I’m kind of worried about what the next real question/challenge is: that of turning those drafts into works that are also so entertaining that not only do people want to read them, they want to PAY to read them. Urgh. How do I do that? When I figure that out, I’ll let y’all know, and likely I’ll be doing jumping jacks at that point.

For now, hah, for now I’m writing 400-word “information articles” on “old metal signs, vintage metal signs, retro metal signs.” It took me about two hours to write 400 words on that somewhat repetitive subject, and I should clear $2.80 for that effort, which covers about half the cost of the coffee drink I bought while I was writing it. Hmmm…writing, good. Finance? Not so good. Oh, and I found out AFTER I got all fixed up on this content site that they only pay you when you’ve amassed enough work for a $25 payment. Somehow they leave that out of all the info up front. You only see that once you’ve written your first article and submitted. Cute, right? How many people do you suppose write four or five articles, get tired of it, and then never write enough to get a first payment? This may be the reason that the company was able to inform me in a recent email that their first-year business effort netted them a status of “in the black” for every day but one out of the first year of operation.

I say all this with cynicism, but a healthy does of humor as well. I don’t hold anything against them for the work I’m given now. It’s still a good way for me to get my chops back, and I can already say to any prospective freelance employers, “Yeah, I’m familiar with SEO writing. I’ve done that.”

Okay, now my word count for this entry is over 400 words, which means I’ve hit the $2.80 mark for content, and I should quit while I’m ahead. Y’all take care, and keep up with whatever creative endeavors you enjoy. I wish you the best in your efforts.

Slingshot – Rolling Ball Sculpture Completed!

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Tom Harold

Woohoo! Another one off the bench!

What do ya think? Fun, huh? Everyone kept saying, “Hey, don’t you think you could maybe, like, make it go up and over? Like a loop? Can’t you do that?” And I was all like, “Yes.” And I did. It whips through the loops and then drops down into the little pocket at the end and spins for a second with the leftover energy.

This one’s pretty fun. It has kind of a leaned back look to it, and the way the long drop launches the marble into the loops it reminded me of a slingshot. From a side angle the bottom loop-the-loop looks like wheels and the stretch up to the spiral at the top looks like what they used to call a “slingshot” dragster, but that’s just me. You’re opines may vary, and that’s totally cool with me. It’s still fun to play with.

Aaaaaaand DONE! “Make Stuff #2” Rolling Ball Sculpture

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Tom Harold

Finished at last! I forget when I started on this thing, but it seems like weeks ago. I think it was nine days hence, but I was figuring it would be wrapped up in no more than a week, or perhaps even less.

Yeaaaaaah, right. I don’t think it’s likely that I can do something simply and quickly, although that last one wrapped up pretty quickly once I was able to put some time in on it. Okay, it’s possible. Not likely, but possible.

So this one was supposed to be pretty simple and quick, and I suppose, compared to the 30-day builds that I’ve done in the past, this one WAS pretty quick, but not as fast as I’d planned, and, well, really…not as simple. Concept, yes. Execution, no!

Basically there’s a spiral that dumps onto this backwards-facing incline, and then the marble gets carried to the top by inertia where it stops, rolls back again, passes the point where it fell from the spiral, and then continues on through the rest of the sculpture. At its most basic it’s just a spiral and about a foot or so of track. In the real world, not so simple.

But enough of that! Check out the results!

Above you can see the unique aspect to this particular sculpture, the brass ramp. Said ramp is made out of the reed plate of a Hohner harmonica. I removed all the reeds and bent it into a shallow U-shaped channel. The track that it mounts to extends for quite some distance before it is anchored to the base. For this reason, when the marble lands on it, it vibrates a lot and looks like it’s about to fall off at any number of points. It also sounds kind of cool, because it’s brass, gives it a nice little clanky, rattley sound. I would like to get some video of this one in particular. I don’t have a camera, though, nor does anyone I know offhand. I’m wondering if maybe my goal should be to sell several of these so that I can afford a camera. After all, the whole point of these sculptures is that they actually move. It’d be nice to show that aspect to people, particularly when it’s a weird one like this one.

Here you can see the extension of the ramp a little better:

To the lower left of the above photo you can see some more brass. This is where the non-spiral portion of the track is finally anchored. This is also where minor insanity set in. I’m guessing there are about ten inches or so of free movement before the track reaches that anchor point. This is necessary for the agove-mentioned wiggling and clanking and whatnot. It just HAD to be done that way, or it would have really taken the fizz out of the punch, so to speak.

Getting that brass cut properly and soldered on there was a PAIN! That was an entire day of my life, and after that entire day, I failed quite spectacularly at the soldering. I had to leave it sitting there all blackened and lumpy, go to bed, and come back to it the next morning. The following day I realized that, if I were to have any hope in completing it as I had envisioned, what was going to be required was that I clamp the entire assembly onto a 2×4 board *vertically* so that the solder would flow onto the joints properly. Note: This is the part of the sculpture where things went from simple to “Hey, wait a minute! How did I end up doing all this work!” ‘Twas totally worth it though, kids, as it turned out freakin’ sweet!

Here’s the final photo showing some more detail on the curved supports for the spiral. Those turned out kind of nice, though I was torn about them for a while. I made them all and then wanted to scrap them and do something else, but instead I made a few cuts and bends and figured they looked pretty decent anyway. Here you can also get a better look at the upswing on the end of the whole affair. It does a nice job of slowing the marble down and bring it to a more gentle stop where it just kind of settles into the curve and waits to be picked up again.

By the way, didn’t my dad do another killer job on the base? He’s pretty awesome. I should probably get hold of him and ask for more for future projects. I have three left, but by the time I’m done he’ll probably just be finishing up another order for me.

So, fun, right? I thought so, anyway. I’ve never done anything previously with an active element like that wiggling ramp. I think I dig it. I’m going to try something like that with the others, some different kind of element for each one, maybe throw in a little more brass while I’m at it. It’s a bit of a pain to solder, but it looks nice when it’s done.

So that’s it! Pretty cool, eh? I’m jazzed. I hope the next one is as fun as this one. Completing this was rewarding, as it negated all those feelings of frustration that I had while I built it. When those brass pieces refused to solder properly I really did want to scrap that whole part of the plan, but I took a deep breath, called on some patience, and it came through just fine. We all have these moments in our creative endeavors. Remember to “Never judge a fledgling piece of work too soon.” That’s Artist’s Way stuff, kids. Learn it, know it, live it! It’s better than a pile of bent copper wire!

Solo Spiral Sculpture Completed!

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Tom Harold

I had a long weekend this weekend, and I used it to my fullest advantage – I did art work! The idea for this series of small sculptures has been brewing for months now. It’s actually part of a meme from Facebook, and I think I accepted the challenge sometime back in…July? August? After that I had a lot of other projects in the pipeline, but didn’t let go of the idea. They were going to be *really* simple, but then I asked dad if he could whip up some wood bases for them to make them a little nicer. Yeah – I asked a fellow perfectionist to just whip something up. Right! It took a few months, but I think that it was well worth the wait. He made them waaaay nicer than I had asked for! Thanks, pop!

So dad did some awesome bases, but I was still caught up with other stuff. I did manage to bend up some initial elements for the sculptures a month or two ago, just some basic spirals. Finally, however, I was able to get down to the business of actually assembling them once Christmas had passed. Thanks to the long weekend I managed to finish this one.

Here is the first from a series of five that I will be doing:

As you can see, it’s a rather simple design. Just a basic spiral. It’s a little hard to add much more to something this small, but I tried to do something fun with the ending ramp. The path dips sharply coming out of the spiral, and by the time the marble reaches the end it has built up a good bit of speed. It reaches the upright portion and tries to climb right up it, runs out of steam, and falls back on itself where it comes to rest in the bottom of the “U.”

Above is a fun view of things and kind of gives you an idea of the roller coaster feel it has when it finishes.

For a simple piece I think it turned out pretty well. After finishing it I immediately started on another one. I hope to have it completed by the end of the week! I just love finishing projects. It’s so counter to the way I used to live my life where I’d start something, get discouraged, shelve it, and then feel bad about the whole thing. There were some things about this sculpture that didn’t fit my idea of the perfect piece, but I managed to let go of that stuff and just be okay with it. Pretty kickass.

Tom Harold

Writing on creativity and rolling ball sculpture

Tag Archives: finishing stuff