Dan Racusin

     At some point in the last two months my friend Oscar and I decided to change our Thursday night drawing sessions into still life painting nights. In this short time we've been meeting I've painted a total of eleven miniature flat panel canvases. Because I'm painting with oils and oils take days to dry I found myself with less and less deskspace and more and more of these 6"x 12" paintings. To remedy this problem, I decided to BUILD MYSELF A BOX!!! Now I've been know to be a box builder kind of guy and although I've built many boxes in the past this was no ordinary box. This box had purpose and was going to require extensive planning and....ah, screw it! It's just another box!       Actually this really is a simple project as you can see. It's just a wooden box! If you don't happen to have a router you can try gluing down small strips of balsa wood instead. Luckily I had access to a router this time and my box came out better ...

       At the end of December last year we attended an art show at the Buckwild gallery in Venice. That night we met the gallery owner and talked with him about the possibility of hosting weekly figure drawing sessions in the space. We quickly came up with a plan and were soon on our way to getting things ready for our first meet up. Jennifer began advertising while my dad and I built ten new drawing benches for the class. The second Monday of January was our first session at the new location and to our surprise the night was a big success. Jennifer brought her amazingly good chocolate chip cookies and every seat was filled .      Next Monday will be a special drawing night in honor of Valentines day. We have a lovely couple modeling for us, so if your local and want to brush up on your drawing skills come on down. For more information about our Monday night figure drawing sessions check us out at www.meetup.com .

As parts of the JIB I decided to build a remote mount in order to control the tilt and pan movements of the camera. I started of with some concept drawings for the design of the rig. After much trail and error I became very discouraged and at the point of my ultimate frustration when I was about to give up I was stuck by a rare bolt of inspiration. BAM! The project was saved by synchronicity. I just so happened that a few weeks before my frustrations began I was on my way home work when a bus hit one my skateboard. The bus cracked one of my trucks leaving the other intact. Right before I decided to quit I gave my closet one last glance over to see if I had anything laying around that might help and, HELLO! Skateboard trucks make camera rigs. After a trip or two to the hardware store I was in business. So far I have successfully built the tilt mechanism. I used two plastic gears I picked up at Smith Brothers Hobby Center . Here's some test of the tilt movement. ...