Slowly getting back to work

I am beginning to work on a new portrait, this time a smiling man. I will be working on other busts in clay for a group show showing during SALA in July/August, in Adelaide, SA.

I have also signed a three month committment to Step into Life, a fitness group with a personal instructor and did a fitness test to start with a 2 km run and various 2 minute tests of pushups, weights, situps, continuous running and squats yesterday so today I can feel my shoulders have been working.
Hopefully I will be more willing to get out and exercise, as the mind is willing but just decides that something else needs to be done first and I just don't end up exercising. So we will see how motivated I get.

There are some beautifully Printed cards of the Mary MacKillop Bronze on sale by the Adelaide Catholic Archdiocese, which I hadn't personally seen until I received one as a Christmas card, so I went into the city and bought 5 packs at $10 each and was able to give my family a memento when I was with them a week ago.
I also have been told that the church has sent 5 orders for miniatures to the foundry.

Visiting my family

John and I left Thursday last to travel to Albury NSW, to catch up with all my family. My eldest brother and his wife were celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary, whilst my second brother and his wife were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, with a lunch for family and friends ,whilst their son and family were visiting them from Ho Chi Min City. So it was catch up time to see everyone, even my youngest brother and his wife were there from Brisbane, Qld and we stayed with my third eldest brother, LaurieWe actually were away from Adelaide while it was extremely hot 43c, but it caught up with us when we arrived back on Monday

First work in new studio

Hope everyone had a joyful Christmas break and a Happy new year. Thanks to all the bloggers for returning to read this blog and I hope you all have had a good restful break over the holidays.

I started today with an outdoor Cardio session with a group of people and a trainer and knew that I need to get fit again.
They ask you to sign up for three months, so I will need to get into the swing of exercising again as I have been very slack of late.
I have been looking at all the snow pictures especially around Twente region in Holland, and here we are in the 30c over here.
I had a request to make a body cast several days ago so this event christened the studio.
After a false start with alginate that was out of date and set within a minute of mixing the kilo batch, we restarted the process with plaster bandages, and was glad I had a helper to cut extra bandages for me.
It took a bit longer than using alginate, but I learnt a few things along the way. The pose was in an s curve with arms raised so the pose was uncomfortable for my friend to hold and the day was also very hot about 39c, which didn't help.
I cast the body mould in plaster and spent the rest of the day cleaning, patching small bubbles and making it ready for my friend to see it later that evening and were very happy with the results.
I will wait for it to dry out and then patina it ready for mounting.
We will at some stage do more but will use fresh alginate as it is not so hard on the model.