Porcupine Tree (How it was done)

The third (and final) part of this work. I talk about my experience and what I learned.

Wood and Book

Let me start by saying that this experience was comprehensive, because I did many things for the first time in my life. For example? I carved a heart out of wood for the first time!

I’ll answer my friend Aaron’s question right away – the wood is ordinary pine. In the first case, I used leftover firewood because I couldn’t understand how much of a job my method would actually do. But…

I managed not only to cut out the heart, but also to sand it. I was able to do all this thanks to a tool known as the “Oscillating Multi-Tool”, or in our case it is called the “renovator”. This is a universal machine that allows you to cut something in wood (some flat hole), sand wood, clean the surface from the remains of concrete mortar and much more. In a sense, it is starting to become one of my favourite tools, because it allows you to do what would be difficult to do without it.

When I practiced on cheap wood, I switched to…road. Just kidding. This board was lying around in my yard, and the only question I had was whether it was from a disassembled toilet. But no. It was also, most likely, pine. In general, I wouldn’t risk it and wouldn’t recommend working with such a tool from oak or other hardwood. And it didn’t matter to us what type of wood it would be. The main thing was that the workpiece fit into our book.

Don’t be afraid that I’m ruining books – this is russian-language literature, and everything russian-language should be destroyed no less than, in its time, the russian federation destroyed everything related to Ukraine (both literature and culture in general). But our question is how to cut a hole in a book? And here…

Our universal tool helped us again! We just had to secure the pages of our book with plastic or other clamps and it could cut out a more or less even hole on its own.

In general, this book was not a mistake in terms of project implementation, but a test sample. I needed to understand what I could do and what problems might arise. As you can see from the photo, the wooden blank was larger than the cutout in the book. Later I will make another wooden blank for further tests.

With the book used for the photo, I took a different approach and marked the dimensions of the blank on paper. For ease of cutting.

I was also more careful with cutting out the narrow parts – we needed the opening to look nice. So I cut out a few hundred pages myself with regular scissors (meaning the two top sides that I didn’t cut with the machine).

Mostly I got a flat hole that could be used for any task. I guess that’s how people who hide keys in books or something made holes 😉

The stage with the book and the heart was completed and we moved on.

Blood and Eyes

I’m the same person who plans to make blood my middle name. Just kidding. But I became obsessed with getting the perfect blood for any use. And it’s all about the blood I had.

It’s not bad on its own. It’s a finished product that you can use when you need to add it to your work. It probably has one of the best consistencies, but its downside is that it’s relatively thick.

My problem was that I needed the blood to flow from the heart and the inscription to be visible on the heart at the same time. How to do this? Almost impossible. Considering that the fire uses a solution of alcohol and water, it will erase everything possible. However, I applied blood to the pages and the heart to see how it would look.

My sick head remembered that the text talked about black eyes. And… I can’t draw. From the word go. But I needed black eyes. There were two options, again. The first is that I take a picture of my eyes (as an option, painted black around, for authenticity) and make a two-layer image, where my eyes will look like they’re looking out of a book. The second… I try, at least somehow, to draw eyes. What’s under the right eye is “dripping makeup”, which is also mentioned in the song, in my case I tried to make them from… nail polish. But the shape of the drop was wrong.

There was an idea to use mascara, but any option was poorly controlled due to the fact that alcohol was used.

Meanwhile, I continued to experiment with blood. The ready-made one seemed too thick for me, so I decided to make an alternative. Overall, I liked the way the blood flowed, which I made from sex lube and food coloring, but I didn’t like the way it stretched. I needed something more liquid. And I remembered that I had glycerin solution! Its stretchiness should give the result I was expecting.

The fluidity has become greater. Especially if you compare it to the finished blood, which, as you can see in the picture below, did not flow, even when lying sideways on a sheet of paper.

Here too, you can see a more successful eye. And we return to blood.

I decided to experiment and add some fake blood to my blood (made from glycerin and paint) for more viscosity.

On the right side you can see that this blood has become more uniform in color and more fluid. But not so much that it completely flows to the bottom. Ideal consistency? Looking for what.

It looked a little different. Not better, not worse. Just different. However, I decided to use regular blood because it seemed like it would look better. Especially if you don’t let it spread like in this picture.

At the same time, I thought I had found the perfect consistency for blood that I could use on my hand. Quite a uniform colour, relatively strong flow. I think I will come back to this recipe again.

But the idea of makeup was bothering me. I took a somewhat roundabout route and tried to make black blood. To do this, I decided to try a basic version of gouache added to artificial blood.

I can’t say that I was impressed with the result. Gouache doesn’t dissolve well in already thick blood. It turns out to be a rather viscous mass.

Another thing was to try activated charcoal tablets, which are also black and can act as a good dye. It seems that they are used where black is needed in the food industry.

In terms of consistency, it was something closer.

It doesn’t look much like regular blood, but it does look like blood that has completely congealed. Especially if you look closer.

The coal gives its effect and our “blood” gets texture. Quite an interesting effect. An alternative option could be toner for refilling laser printer cartridges. But I didn’t have it to check, so what is there.

The advantage of books is that you can tear out a page and draw on a new one. That’s what I did in this case. I came up with a slightly different eye design. Well… I did. I remembered one of my favorite eyes, namely the eye from the Neverwinter Nights game logo. It looked something like this:

Of course, it didn’t turn out so well for me, but I was satisfied with the result.

As you can see from this picture, I decided to ditch the idea of makeup smears because it was just so messy. Here you can see my test heart, which I was supposed to set on fire.

Fire

You know what the stupidest thing you could want to see?

Fire in sunlight. The fact is that water with alcohol burns a little differently than we are used to, and you can see the burning, well…except in some barn.

That’s better, isn’t it? This should be taken into account when you plan to use artificial fire. I’m a pretty careful person, so for my first attempt I decided to wear welding gloves so as not to burn my hands.

It so happened that as soon as I saw the lyrics of the song, a picture appeared in my mind that it must be some kind of book burning in my hands. When I saw the mention of a barn in the lyrics, I shouted “Bingo!” – because we do have an old barn in which the previous owners kept a cow. I was afraid that there was a lot of stuff there that could easily catch fire (there was old dry hay everywhere that we still hadn’t cleaned up), so to be safe, I cleared a place for the book and added a tank in case the book burned badly and I needed to put it somewhere safe.

A separate type of art is… drawing with blood. I tried to draw an eye with a syringe with a nozzle. And I almost succeeded, because either the charcoal didn’t dissolve well, or the needle was too thin for my “blood”. The solution came out with difficulty. But I think that for this reason too I will come back and try to draw something. Who knows, maybe it will be another creation?

Here the colour became darker, but the blood started to flow poorly, which is what was mentioned above.

Cover

I would also like to mention the cover, which I made myself.

I once had a series of photos that I took at the beginning of the war. There was a really good photo of a “tree made of hands.” You can see one of the works here on DeviantArt.

I had a few similar pictures that I took with my little thermal camera and printed them on adhesive-backed paper.

Each photo was cut out separately and glued to the base – the book cover. I wanted to have authenticity at this point, so that when I take a picture in the barn – the cover would be the one I need. In general, everything would be absolutely perfect if the text in the book was also reworked, as if it were really someone’s diary, written by hand. But I once burned my diary, and in English I would have a kind of writing, like for a girl’s diary. So here was my omission. Also among the omissions – there was a desire to use a kerosene lamp, so that it would be done “in the old style”, but it was simply not available, so a candlestick was used.

The whole job was done in one day. I gained a few new skills, for the first time I dealt with sawing something out of wood (and paper, ha-ha), for the first time I used alcohol to create artificial fire. In general, it is called “lighting fluid”, but in composition it is an ordinary alcohol solution with water.

Am I satisfied with the work? Yes, quite. Something could have been done better, but the skills I gained while creating this work will always remain with me. So let’s continue to develop in a creative direction 🙂