Upcycling through lockdown

This is the story of an artwork created during lockdown. 

Read on if you want to know how it was made.

Creating art has shown itself to be a great comfort in times of stress and anxiety and it's helped a great many people to get through the pandemic. Certainly, lockdown has made me more productive than ever. And I've loved following TV shows like Sky Portrait Artist of the Week, Keith Lemon's Fantastical Factory of Curious Crafts, Grayson's Art Club and online art clubs run by Noel Fielding, Olaf Falafel and Lulu Allison. 

So it seemed appropriate to make something that would be a memorial to these strange times. And, in the spirit of recycling/upcycling and being restricted to staying at home, I wondered if it was possible to make it using ONLY things found in my house, garden, shed and garage? I love a challenge and this seemed to be a good one. I love trash-bashing and scratch-building - two terms that describe making art from things that most people would throw away or that have uses normally unconnected with art. 

So I looked around the house and gathered together some bits and bobs and an idea came to me ... 

A few years ago, I painted a picture featuring characters from The Wizard of Oz.

My tin man had a round, boiler-like body and, at one time, I'd considered making a model of him. To that end I'd saved the plastic ball in which I'd got some Lindor chocolates as a Christmas present. I didn't take a photo of it at the time, but you can see the product in the first minute of this Youtube video. However, I wasn't going to make the tin man. The junk I had accumulated suggested something different. 

I envisaged a robot businessman complete with archetypal brolly, briefcase, Financial Times and bowler hat (I had a ready-made one left over from a long since thrown away Mr Potatohead). He would represent the pre-Covid world; the age of the wage-slave commuter. With more people now working from home and the reality that working practices will have to change in the future, he could be a memorial to the 'old ways'. 

So out came the sketch pad ...

The design was partially dictated by some of the junk that I'd accumulated. For a start I had the plastic sphere. I also had a brain-shaped stress toy I could use, plus an old broken pressure gauge from a boiler repair. And I had a cheap plastic display dome that I could use for the head case (I'd bought it to display a fossil. They are surprisingly cheap - look). 

I had my design! Now came the job of making it.

I'd already put 'rivets' all around the seam that joins the two hemispheres of the ball - I used googly eyes because real screws or bolts would have meant lots of drilling and screwing and the constant threat of cracking the plastic. The ball had been painted with black acrylic so I coated it with a bright copper spray-paint I'd once bought  to jazz up some old pipes. I'd have preferred a matt finish to be honest but, for this project, I had to work with what I had. Plus, I knew of ways to 'distress' the copper to make it look old and well-used. 

Here's the 'copper' ball. In the background of the photo you can also see the legs starting to come together. They were chocolate dessert pots plus some tightening handles from an old Flymo lawnmower that had died the previous Summer. The handles had ended up in my scratch-building box for possible future re-use. These were perfect as they looked like Chelsea boots. The left leg was then secured to the base (an old off-cut from some decking) with a long screw and then the legs were attached to the body.

I drilled a hole in the body for the pressure gauge and fitted it. Originally I'd planned to put it where the robot's heart would be but I figured it was too big - especially once arms were added - so it went below the waistband. Okay, it's a bit childish ... but much funnier. I then began the process of 'dirtying down' the copper. This basically meant putting on successive washes of brown ink. I also mixed up some 'verdigris' using green acrylic paint and filler to push into the joints. This was then washed with ink. The body and legs were then drybrushed with a metallic bronze paint to bring out the detail. If you don't know what drybrushing is, here's a good tutorial. A 'neck' was then added in the form of a cable reel from an old dead strimmer.

Next, I worked on the 'head'. This is when being a hoarder of interesting bits comes into its own.

Whenever a piece of my tech dies - like old mobiles or chargers or radios - and they have no resale value, I rip out the insides before chucking them. Old circuit boards, switches and other interior components are great for model-making. So, I mounted my stress-ball brain on a milk bottle lid on a clear blank plastic disc (that I got in a stack of writable DVDs). Then I fitted bits of old circuit board around it and attached wires all over the place. And, because I needed my character to see, I made a camera from the starter switch of the aforementioned dead lawnmower and used lots of other bits and bobs to dress it all up. Finally I added an old teddy bear's eye and a small pink pom-pom I found while dog walking. Then I painted the lot black and drybrushed it with bronze (and gave the brain two coats of gloss varnish to make it look wet and living). 

Important note: As I intended all of this to go under the plastic display dome, I needed to constantly check height and width to ensure it would all fit.

Now it was on to the arms and here, I'll admit, I sort-of cheated. I couldn't find anything suitable around the house. But I did own a robot moneybox I'd once bought in a charity shop for a few quid. And I REALLY liked the look of the arms. So the moneybox was sacrificed for the greater good (and helped add a lot more interesting bits and pieces to my scratch-building box ). I immediately set about augmenting the arms with various small components and wires and then used a white primer before spraying them copper-coloured.

The arm with the three cannons instead of a hand/claw was an issue. But I'd already cannibalised a defunct phone-charging cable for the head so I thought 'How about using some of that to make some metallic tentacles that can emerge from those holes?' My businessman robot could then use them to do useful things like hold a mobile phone or an umbrella. 

To make the tentacles pose-able I simply removed the original cable from inside the metal outer sheath and replaced it with a piece of stiff garden wire. And talking of umbrellas, I needed to make one to scale. So, first, I drew a 10" diameter circle on 140gsm cartridge paper. Then I spray-mounted it onto a piece of cheap nylon fabric of a type they use in real umbrellas (my wife is a seamstress and had a cut-off I could use. But you could use an old shirt). I then trimmed around the edges and painted the inside black. I made the shaft using a bamboo barbecue skewer painted silver and sculpted a handle and a pointy end bit from Milliput. A bit of judicious folding and the application of some black hot glue (yup - hot glue comes in all sorts of colours - look) and voila!

I then used my Dremel to cut holes in the body for attaching the arms. And, having done the umbrella, I made a few more props like this copy of the Financial Times (simply printed from an image online and folded) and a mobile phone made from balsa wood with a printed keyboard added.

I now turned my attention to the base. I got a sheet of thick card (actually the back cover of an old A3 sketchpad) and painted it grey. I then cut it into 'paving slabs' and stuck them onto my base. The gaps were then filled with a mix of filler and acrylic paint. I added bubblegum to the pavement using pink hot glue, cigarette ends made of Milliput and drybrushed some dirt onto the slabs.

The crisp packet - my favourite item on the whole piece! - was made by printing both sides on ordinary printer paper (the bag is about an inch in length.). I then covered one side in self-adhesive clear film (of the kind you cover books with) and spray-mounted foil onto the other. Some double sided sticky tape to join the two halves and it was done. 

I also added some plants in the cracks between slabs. These came from a very odd source. My strimmer ran out of cable when I had just a small patch of grass left to do. Because of lockdown I couldn't go out and buy one so had to order online. But, discovering that it would take a fortnight to arrive, I got some packing tape and tried to use it as a substitute - and it worked! Well, enough to finish the strimming anyway. And the tattered grass-stained ends of the tape were too good to waste. They became my plants.

I was then out on the daily dog walk and stumbled upon a place in the woods where some kids had been doing 'balloons'. What I mean is that they'd got hold of some nitrous oxide cylinders (used legally in kitchen gas guns to aerate cream etc.) and used them to inflate balloons that they could then inhale for kicks. Silly sods. Like any drug it can be dangerous. However, the cylinders seemed too good to waste so I picked them up, dropped them in the first bin I came to, but kept three. It had suddenly occurred to me that, with my businessman's head inside a sealed dome, he'd have to get his oxygen from somewhere. So I created a breathing apparatus using the cylinders and stuff from my scratch-building box.

With the model nearly complete, I noted that there were some stability issues as there's a lot of weight pushing the model backwards (especially the 'aqualung' apparatus). So, in order to create some support I installed some street furniture - a 'no parking' post made of dowling and card with chopped balsa wood and PVA to make tarmac around the base. And I couldn't resist adding a Covid-related humorous poster about social distancing (if you're not from the UK and you don't get the reference, the Chuckle Brothers were a comedy double act whose catch-phrase was 'To me - to you - to me - to you' when moving any large object).

I asked Mrs C if she could knock up a collar and tie for him. I'm particularly pleased with the tie, made from a ghastly old 1970s neck scarf I had kicking about. Oh, and I used a Sharpie to set the digital clock at a number we all know and love before enclosing the brain inside the dome.

As a final touch I decided to hide his lunch under his bowler hat. This is actually a beautiful little FIMO model of a burger made for me by m'chum Holly Hale a few years ago as a key fob. I reckoned it was such a good piece of modelling that it deserved better than spending most of its life in my pocket.

So there you go. The completed sculpture - made at a total cost of zero! Or, at least, no money over and above that which I had originally paid for the objects, paints and glue used. 

I hope you like it.