Paipo's Stone Tikis - 1st Thread - Jun 06 - May 08

Paipo's got a mug... :)

Schooled by the finest.....Capt. K and Master G

[ Edited by: Babalu 2008-03-26 20:31 ]

Wow!!!! I have to have one of those mugs! How can I get one Babalu?

Timid, I'm stoked you've got your big guy out as a touchstone. Keep fondling and waxing him and he will just get better and better with age. I actually tested many of the lines and grooves for "tactility" and feel with my fingertips as I carved it with just that in mind :)

MIT, your question will be answered with the new set of pics (below). I will be in touch shortly about something else too... :wink:

Ben, just keep checking the shore - these type of pebbles are called "float" round these parts as the flat shape allows them to be lifted and tossed on the beach. So you never know....
Big stuff - yeah,well it works for me too. Might be time to go even bigger!

Tama, how about you hatch a few more eggs from that nest of yours called "the box"? There a few I'd like to to see done, and they're so close... at least one of 'em I liked and played with out at your place (the rei niho) has made a reappearance!

Tom, thanks! I can see you're a man of few words by your postcount, so I appreciate you stopping in to check out my stuff!

Robin - we had a great time, Hoki really has it goin on, and we often daydream about moving there. Steve really made me welcome and I will try and get back to hang out without feeling rushed sometime soon!

Talkin about "got it goin' on" , harro your stuff lately has been been wicked! Cheers for dropping by! Had any luck with getting hold of your late parcel yet?

Kinny - no more on this piece other than what I drew up - this stone is freaking me out! (see below) I'm getting there, but the back side is definitely off limits! But that is a very cool idea, and one I think I'll have to try now with the right stone. Yin/yang - reversible - night/day? Possibilities are endless!

Cheers Pat - been grooving on your stuff too lately, that new cannibal is the $##%#! Itching to do some bigger sculptures and some full figure work this season.

Babs - :o :o :o
Just beautiful - I don't know what I've done to deserve such a treat but WOW...I guess now there's a reason for my name to be next to yours on Ooga Mooga, thanks to your handiwork! The mug weirdos are frothing over this one, so I know how special it is that I'll have the one-and-only. I think I told you when I got my Manowar how much I like the grape/purple glaze...and a tealy green too! YES! This is gonna look sooo good in my cabinet! You rock!

Jen...sorry to say (as you may have guessed from the above), just like Highlander: "There can be only one..."

Pheeewwww!
The post that took 12 hours...started this early this morning, and had to C'n'P what I'd done when a visitor arrived. Aside from thanking everyone, I've got some more progress pics. I had also done more on the Poutini, but he looks too much like the other shots, so I'm gonna wait til he's complete before posting him again. Both these whole stone pieces must be done by Sunday (NZ time) - I have to get other things underway, and pronto...like a piece for the swap!

Before we get to that, a trip report - we went north for our Easter break, and while there I visited an exhibition of regional art - pro and amateur, kids and all....a bit of a mixed bag. One piece I really liked was a Maori wahine carved from "West Coast Limestone", with very nicely detailed tattoos carved in low relief all along her body. I had a feeling I knew where the stone might be from, and scheduled a quick stop at one of my favourite beaches on the way back home....

You can see the goodies lying around in the foreground...you can find nice cobbles (and much bigger) of pink, orange, golden and white limestone. This entire coastline is a rockhound's paradise and is a big part of what keeps me here and motivated.
I'm not 100% sure if the carving I saw came from this stuff, but the odds are good! There were also all kinds of cool found object sculptures and arrangements on the beach - there was an event here a month or two back but many looked more recent...?
The haul (all I could carry in one armload before being eaten alive by sandflies):

I have already used one of these on a new project, but that will have to wait! In the meantime, I made good progress on the "hatching manaia". As befits the subject, this stone has feathered a bit as I've released tension within, and it's felt like Russian roulette at times with a handpiece substituting for the revolver. Thankfully, the worst is now past and my pebble is still intact...

More soon...thanks for bearing with me on this long-assed post! As a bonus, here's a pic from the party I attended Saturday night. Pity the light isn't better, or you could see my Alohastation pendant! DIG?!
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Dig!

Beautiful work on that stone, Paipo. I bet all those fractures gave you cramps! Keep on him!

-G

Excellent "long-assed"Post Paipo, Much fun reading your 12 hours of pain. Even better is the work on the new Hatchling, what a surprise he is gonna be. Looks like this stone may have made you a bit gun-shy? Kind of like trying to coax that extra bit of detail out of a real Chippy piece of wood like Cedar or Mahogany when just a bit too much pressure leaves you with a whole nose in your hand or an ear on the floor along with many choice words expected from such occasions.
Not fair telling us about neat pieces started and holding back the pictures, you Know we Must see it All! We'll fix You!
You Know we Love you, right? :lol: :lol:

MAN - those beach rock pictures just kill me! Hawaii may be a beautiful place - but it is made of only 1 kind of rock! While typing this I glanced up to my little pile of New Zealand beach stones I have piled up by my desk. I took a ton of photos like this on our South Island trip:

The new carving is amazing. Can't wait to see what you do with the limestone! When we were in Picton they were having a 24 (or maybe it was 48?) hour stone carving contest. All these sculptors with a huge hunk of limestone and a mere 24 hours to turn it into something - some of the results were amazing (and some not-so-much). Weird to walk through the fairground and see all these carvers stretched to their limits. They all looked like zombies from sleep deprivation, and quite a lot of booths had been abandoned by sculptors who up and quit.

Henrik

Paipo rocks!!!!

I don't know how you do it, paipo - you turn an already beautiful water sculpted rock into something even more beautiful!!!!

That beach shot looks like my kind of place. I could wander on it for hours, if not days....

I'm glad to see my little buddy is taking you out to see all the best places. That bird is excellent - the way the shape of the stone and the subject blend - just awesome. Keep them comin!!

Clarita - thanks! My wife just rescued Hoku Ili from my workshop and brought him into the bedroom. He works very nicely in there! If candles could talk...

Oh!! are you going to post pics of that too, is this the beginning of the Hoku xxx story? Oh my!
moving to the house is a little step for Hoku but a big step for tiki kind!!! It's great news that the wahine dig him!! But be careful 'cause you can see he has a way with the laydies! :D!
And the Babalu Paipo mug totally rocks!! I'm happy for you :) !!

WOW Paipo, you must have been like a kid in a Candy store and the pix you showed were really some excellent stuff.
HappyHappyhappy

Wow, that new pendant looks gorgeous mate :D Love your rock hunting pics as always :D

More soon, and I'll reply to all the comments when I get some finished work shots, but I promised hewey (I think?) that I'd post this non-tiki but still very Polynesian influenced commish I just made:

Poutini is getting very close to done...

Oh...That is a FABULOUS!!!!!! design Rhys. Elegant stylish quietly beautiful clean lines. My socks would have been knocked off if I'd been wearing any.

P.S. Forgot to ask about the material, and to mention the lovely little inlay in the center of the stone. Is it a shell of some kind? It's a beautiful color. Is the form after a fan shape?

[ Edited by: Robin 2008-03-30 07:08 ]

Very nice ulu.

On 2008-03-29 17:42, Paipo wrote:
I promised hewey (I think?) that I'd post this non-tiki but still very Polynesian influenced commish I just made

Thanks mate! That looks very PNG influenced to me, reminds me of a PNG style nose piercing :D

Cheers G, Will, Tom, Ben, Henrik, Jim, Clarita, Ben (again!), hewey, Everlie and Robin!

G & Ben, yep, the feathers are a concern with these float stones, but I have enough experience with them now to know how to minimise the risk. Not to say that that will get me through all problems - turns out the biggest chip I had to worry about this week was on the other piece! (see below)

VanT, those stones look like they're from a little further south of here - Hokitika or even down the Glacier way? There are so many different stones here (and beaches to find them on) and I am always getting turned on to new discoveries by the locals. I think that symposium was probably 48 hours looking at the size of the raw blocks and having had some experience of the Oamaru limestone. I can't imagine the bidding was very hot on the giant Sony camera!?! WTF?

Clarita, unfortunately Hoku Ili was getting too much sun in his new location, and was turning a disturbing shade of yellow! so I have relocated him back to the dank, tiki-infested interior of the workshop :)

Robin, the piece is just a greywacke pebble (you can see where I've nipped out the "shoulders" to allow for the tapered rod), and the components are all MOP, some of which I brought back from Rarotonga. The main crescent/breastplate piece is carefully fitted into a groove in the stone, then pinned with silver, which is then concealed under the little inlay. Earlier versions just had the silver pin polished down flush to the stone surface, but I like this way better.
All the guesses are close to the mark - this is mainly influenced by Solomons and PNG shell adornments. I have always loved the pieces made from pearl shell, where they are designed around the curved outside edge of the shell and it is pretty much left natural.
I had to look up the ulu, which is very similar in form to pounamu ripi (blades) I have seen in the museums here!

So, on to some new pics! These whole-stone pieces are a lot of fun but occasionally dicey - sometimes you have to make the choice between leaving a problem area you know might come adrift, or biting the bullet and working out how to remove it without compromising the design.
Case in point:

If you look carefully you can see a "floating" chip sitting on the lower lip. I wanted to lower this area anyway, so I very gently tapped away at it with another pebble to loosen it, then prised it off with one of several little tools I have adapted for just such tasks. I worked around the area to blend it, and it came out better than it was. Still gave me some agonising moments when I was working it loose, wondering if the fracture went right through the whole lip!

I also made another decision that cost me a lot of extra time - choosing to do my paua inlay from the piece of shell that had a natural hole in it. This shape was incredibly awkward to fit, but was worth the effort in the end. Held in place by a tiny little black jade pin!

So, many hours later, with the addition of a shell tooth, and overnight wait for the epoxy to dry, and a coating of beeswax...done!

[ Edited by: Paipo 2008-03-31 02:18 ]

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
looks alive!

:o Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, you're goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood! :o

Hi Paipo - A super nice way in which you did the eye . . . cleaver and beautiful. Can you show us sometime how you manage to hold, shape, and polish such small pieces. I just picked up a small piece of black coral to use in a similar "eye" on something I'm working on. Thanks, Timid

Just had to move these over to the new page.

He does look alive...that shell/jade eye is a real coup. Wow!

Thanks for the info on the shell piece, and the construction method. I like the shell inlay better than silver in my minds eye ...silver might have been to chilly for the overall warm soft look of this piece. I would like to see more of your not exactly tiki but Polynesian inspired works.

Double WOW!

p.s. I just realized that the pin wouldn't have showed much. I originally pictured it as a silver dot like the inlay....anyway....what you did is perfect.

And I have a question...do you cut those curves in the greywacke or grind them in...or some other method? Thanks Paipo.

[ Edited by: Robin 2008-03-31 13:15 ]

Totally too sweet, a true work of art.

Sir Paipo, The Ancients are Strong in you here recently and your works are really showing. Of course I believe you could do this on your own but it's just easier in my mind to think the ancient forces/carvers are helping you make the correct decisions and helping you create better art,but I know you are really doing it all yourself. You are earning Much respect with your efforts here recently I Hope you know that. Don't stopdoing this stuff, what ever it is that you are doing, but Please just a few more pictures :lol:

wow, totally menacing but beautiful at the same time!!!!!

Dang Paipo...you are on fire sir! This is really an outstanding work of art. Your skill set is just superb!

that is amazing. You are a master.

this may be a stupid question (so please excuse my ignorance), but for the shell eyepiece, does the pin hold the shell in place, or do you glue it too?

paipo as always amazing carving. I always enjoy your new creations :)

Ouch !
Fantastic !

Benjamin.

Good Lord, Paipz!

Good lord is right WOW the eye the tooth. Let there be life.

Whoa...lots of interest on this guy! I better get busy...

Cheers Kinny, Jonesey, timid, Robin, JP, BenZ, harro, Babs, Polynesiac, keigs, Benjamin, hank and seeksurf...I really appreciate the feedback!

I guess the eye worked out OK then? :wink: I spend a lot of time on doing the eyes on my carvings - they really are the finishing touch in terms of creating the right feel. I wanted this fella to be mischievous, but not too evil. The idea was to scale down the technique used on big carvings where a whole paua shell is set into the socket, with a raised peg in the middle to secure it and create the pupil. The concave shape really grabs the light and gives it life - so it's not really my idea, but another concept borrowed from the master artists of old.

Question time:

On 2008-03-30 17:00, timidtiki wrote:
Hi Paipo - A super nice way in which you did the eye . . . cleaver and beautiful. Can you show us sometime how you manage to hold, shape, and polish such small pieces. I just picked up a small piece of black coral to use in a similar "eye" on something I'm working on. Thanks, Timid

Well, it's just a matter of improvising with what's at hand. Each time I go through a process I usually find a new and better way of doing it.
In this case, I had nice little tapered rod on hand (much like the one used in the MOP piece on pg. 94), which is just turned on the diamond wheel and then finished on the sanding drums. I use these tapered rods in many of my designs and always have few kicking around in various materials. I cut off the end I needed with a little disc burr, then I realised I had the perfect holder sitting in jar on my desk - these are irrigation tubes I use for my gravity feed water supply:

So, just jammed the tapered end in, and domed the cut end on a little diamond drum, then finished it with fine grit burr. No need to sand with such small piece!

On 2008-03-30 17:09, Robin wrote:
p.s. I just realized that the pin wouldn't have showed much. I originally pictured it as a silver dot like the inlay....anyway....what you did is perfect.
And I have a question...do you cut those curves in the greywacke or grind them in...or some other method? Thanks Paipo.

Yep - the silver leaves a smaller dot, so it looks very similar, but because it's shinier than the mop (and metallic) I decided to disguise it and keep the look more organic. I also obsessively put threes into my work, so I liked the balance the 3 MOP elements create.
The negative curves were cut with core drills first (always my #1 choice for getting rid of as much stone as quickly as possible) then refined with cylindrical or bullet shapes, then mostly hand sanded with diamond cloth on dowel (or just rolled up).

On 2008-03-30 21:22, Polynesiac wrote:
this may be a stupid question (so please excuse my ignorance), but for the shell eyepiece, does the pin hold the shell in place, or do you glue it too?

It's a good question! It did hold it reasonably well as the hole was tapered to match the peg, but stone being what it is, I still put a dab of epoxy into the hole and around the edges where the low points of the shell sat in the socket. I 'm trying to move away from gluing at all wherever possible, but teeth are one thing that seem to always require epoxy. I figured out after I'd finished that I could've made a little ebony peg that would probably work without any glue.

On 2008-03-30 19:21, Benzart wrote:
Don't stopdoing this stuff, what ever it is that you are doing, but Please just a few more pictures :lol:

At your service!

:down:You can see here where the piece came out of the bottom lip, but it created a great transtion from worked -> rough stone

:down:This angle shows how the entire form was suggested by the top of the stone. All the work up here is already done!

OK, that will do for now - I'm off to make something really shitty so I don't have to type so much....
:lol:

THANKS Paipo, the addad pictures really do make a Difference. This shot"

Is InCREdible and really shows him fully alive in his organic kind of way. You have made a Lovable, kind of fierce-looking, Rock Monster who is no Monster at all but a sweet Stoner. The Eye is what pulls him all together and breathes life into him.
But I get off track here, the Extra pictures, I realize, take extra time, more bandwidth and all, but are really what makes this Forum come alive. More progress shots means more understanding of "How it's Made" and help other artists understand the mechanics of the carving a bit better and for the Non-artist they give a bit more insight of what it takes to produce a piece like this.
"OK, that will do for now - I'm off to make something really shitty so I don't have to type so much....
:lol:"
So, even those shitty pieces(few and far between!)need to be seen if not necessarily heard.
Plus your stuff is just so Awesome, we need to see as much as we can so we remember who this Paipo guy really is!
So, Thanks again for the extra lessons. :lol: :lol: :lol:

ummm, yeah, what benzart said.

On 2008-04-01 05:36, Benzart wrote:
a Lovable, kind of fierce-looking, Rock Monster who is no Monster at all but a sweet Stoner.

Are you talking about me or the carving?

Thanks Ben - I can see you enjoyed this one, maybe almost as much as I enjoyed making it. Actually, since I finished it I can really see the influence a certain Floridian carver has had on the evolution of my work in this very piece.
You're right about the pics. I don't seem to take as many as I did on the earlier carvings, but I'm always happy to post more of the finished piece if requested. It definitely helps seeing all the angles on the more sculptural works.

I'm a little wary with progress pics these days unless I'm sure I'm on track and the piece will be finished sometime soon. This one is getting very close now, although looking at the pics I took I can see some areas that will need "correcting" (said in the voice of the bartender from "The Shining"):

I am working incredibly slowly and carefully on this one so I don't blow it, and he is starting to pop out of his shell a bit more now. This stone really has been a test of my nerves and patience. Maybe 1 or 2 more sessions to go?

PS thanks too surfintiki!

Thanks for the kind words and Yes I think I've enjoyed watching him being created as much as you have enjoyed creating him. He's one of my all-time favorite Paipo's. This current guy seems to be hatching rather Perfectly as I'm sure only you could make happen. Thanks for the update pic, it really does make a difference.

On 2008-04-04 01:06, Paipo wrote:
I am working incredibly slowly and carefully on this one so I don't blow it

I feel that way with everything I make! That's going to be a great piece, Paip!

..and this guy is WIKKID! :o

Rock it, Bruddah!

Paipo you are an excellent artist my friend! That last piece is Sweet stuff.I wish you could come to Bens Carvin Chop I would love to hear more about your art and your country, maybe some time in the future,Mahalo for sharin , Aloha, Mooney

Thankyou Ben, Bowana, Mooney...
I would love to get to a chop - I'm sure I could teach you guys the basics in day or so and you'd be off and racing! So much can be learned when you are able to see how the tools are used. Florida is very high on my "to do" list when I finally make it stateside - I was a little sad to hear about the Hukilau being the final one, as out of all the tiki events it was my #1 goal. But the Mai Kai will still be there! Let's not forget Follynesia coming up too, and also the chop at Ben's place. I expect photos...lots of photos.

So, I got this guy done yesterday. I did do a lot of finishing work, but the final look is a still a little rough round the edges in keeping with the overall character of the stone. I'm still amazed I didn't lose any major chunks from this one - I was definitely pushing this pebble close to its limits. Slow and steady wins the race! Once he had the patented "Paipo Day spa" treatment I actually had a hard time working out where all those feather fractures went :)

I love how you work with the natural features of the stones. Gives it such a sweet organic feel :D :D

Paipo, he's Really Beautiful. Just hatching, I'm sure he;ll be looking for food so what you gonna feed him?
Excellent!

beautiful work paipo. that green is stunning!

Paipo, Paipo, Paipo....this hatchling is one terrific piece! It's wonderful to see what you find hiding in the stone....more, more!

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG BOY!
Turned out killah!
Manaia in the House!
WHOOP! WHOOP!
You nailed it on this one!
love the natural features blended with that paipo precision!
Slow and steady DID win this race!

This is definitely a masterwork Paipo. Love the surface on this one and the motion of all those curves. Impeccable work. I'd like to get one of those patented Paipo Day Spa Treatments myself that surface looks so good! I wish you could come to the chop too.... and bring Tama, that would really be something. I'll buy the first round of Mai Tai's for the house.

Looking Excellent my friend, you are a very talented artist,Aloha, Mooney

WoW what a gorgeous piece! NICE!

THAT, is amazing Paipo!!!

I love it!

Mustang Island Tiki

On 2008-04-05 21:50, Paipo wrote:
Thankyou Ben, Bowana, Mooney...
I would love to get to a chop - I'm sure I could teach you guys the basics in day or so and you'd be off and racing! So much can be learned when you are able to see how the tools are used. Florida is very high on my "to do" list when I finally make it stateside - I was a little sad to hear about the Hukilau being the final one, as out of all the tiki events it was my #1 goal. But the Mai Kai will still be there! Let's not forget Follynesia coming up too, and also the chop at Ben's place. I expect photos...lots of photos.

So, I got this guy done yesterday. I did do a lot of finishing work, but the final look is a still a little rough round the edges in keeping with the overall character of the stone. I'm still amazed I didn't lose any major chunks from this one - I was definitely pushing this pebble close to its limits. Slow and steady wins the race! Once he had the patented "Paipo Day spa" treatment I actually had a hard time working out where all those feather fractures went :)

Thanks hewey, Benz, OceaOtica, Babs, Kinny, Robin, Mooney, seeksurf and M.I.T. - glad you all were groovin on the manaia. I'm definitely gonna keep working the whole stones for while, but I also have quite a few pebble tikis on the bench at the moment too (in various stages of completion). I'll post pics when some of 'em are closer to hatching...

In the meantime, I was asked for some pics of my workspace. I think I may have posted a few before, but I can't be bothered searching through this bloated thread (which will be officially retired at 100 pages!) to find out if I have. I had thought of creating a new "post your workspace" thread here in carving, but folks seem to be posting up their workshops in their own threads lately so that's good enough for me. Babalu and Benz have both added some cool shots in theirs...check em out if you haven't already!

On with the tour:

After climbing the 48 steps from the street, we're here:

I'm just about out of space as you can see, but I keep buying tikis! What am I gonna do?!? (If I had my way the entire inside of the house would look like this too, but my wife will not capitulate...yet!)

PS I will post some closeups of a couple of spots too...there is a fair bit of TC art tucked away in those pics!