RAVEN - continued

Worked a bit on him yesterday and here is the finished (?) piece. May add some beads in a few days after we live together for awhile.

 Decided to do a white wash on the face with black shaded claw marks radiating from the hairline. Since this is not a portrait, I was able to use ideas from various face paints of Native Americans. The claw marks are carried into the chest region as well with a wash of black and extender.

 The straight black hair is added and soaked with styling spray so it can be posed almost strait out the back of the head. It blends well into the feathers attached to the back of the head.

 The base is simply a piece of an Arborvitae tree which I had trimmed earlier. It is soaked in sealer so the bark will not fall off.

 The skin around the feathers is painted black and blended onto the torso a bit so the transition from skin to feather is a bit blurred.

Finished! The figure is 12" tall, the entire piece is 16" with the height of the base included.  The wing is not removable but since the figure and the wing are in the same plane, they can lay flat in a long, narrow box for shipping.
Thanks for looking, have a great day!
Mark

RAVEN - new work

Hi all, thought I would show a little bit of one of two new pieces I am working on. This guy is being made just for Ebay so I went a little out of my normal style to test the waters.
The piece is based on two Native American beliefs: one is the many stories of the Raven in their culture, the other is the concept of Shape-shifting.
I have combined them into a figure of Raven shifting into his human form as he alits upon a branch.
The basic armature of wire and tubing remains the same as we have covered a number of times. The sculpting however includes on arm sculpted as a wing and one led sculpted as a claw.

The sculpting is finished and the base skin tones are applied. The "bird parts" are painted black so any gaps in the feathers will not be noticed.

 Here you can see the holes in the wings which will anchor the calamus of each feather. They are set into the raw clay with a porcupine quill at the proper angle for the position of the finished wing.

The face is a portrait of a Native American model from the internet. You can see the same holes in the groin area for the base of the feather to insert.











The primary feathers are cut to length and the calamus is inserted into the hole and secured with super glue. The super glue will penetrate into the paint and get a better bond than other glues.

 The second course of smaller cover feathers is applied over the primaries.

 Additional layers of feathers are attached to recreate a facsimile of an actual raven wing. These are applied with Fabri-tac since they are applied to the surface and not inserted into the clay.

Additional feathers are used on the elbow of the right arm, the back of the head and nape of the neck, the tailbone,  the groin and raven leg to carry the theme of the metamorphosis of the raven to the man.
More to follow as I get him done. Thanks for looking, have a great day!
Mark

Wrapping up the Demon

Well, we have taken quite a bit of time on this set of figures. Yesterday afternoon I was able to sit down and wrap up the wee ones.

If you have been with us along the journey, you have already met out demon.

I started the finish work on our child by putting on a pair of socks followed by canvas sneakers.

The base is pine with a layer of clay adhered to the top, sculpted to look like cobblestones and stippled in greys and greens.

I used the same coarse green duck cloth for the pants as I used for the robe on my William and Kate piece we did earlier this year (see past posts).

The shirt is yellow striped cotton and is constructed on the child.

A little note about going from design to finished piece. Those of you who have followed along may remember that this started as a little girl in a dress. Well, as the piece developed "she" then became a "he". After the shoes, pants, and shirt he was almost done. However, when I pulled this red hair out of the bin, all that changed - again. I decided that he would be better as a tomboy. The hair has a natural sweep and wave which mimic the sweep of the tentacles on the demon. I also added freckles to match the spots on the demon's face and arms.

So, here they are all done. The final steps were adding over sized buttons to the shirt to "girl it up" a bit and painting the canvas of the shoes in pink.

Thanks for joining us. I would love to see your creations on this theme if you sculpted along. Please check the "kiddies" out on our Ebay store this week: just look for "Mark Dennis" and they should pop up.
Have a great day!

MONSTER SKIN PAINTING - DETAILS

Here is a simplified step by step of the skin painting for the demon as promised.

 This is a flat piece of Baby ProSculpt clay all ready for painting.

 The palette of Blush, Adobe Red, and Plum with puddles of retarder ready to be mixed.

 Blush is mixed with retarder to make a semi-transparent glaze which is stippled onto the clay. You can see the stippling creates a texture of more and less transparent areas.

The Adobe Red and retarder mix goes on next leaving areas of the blush showing through. You do not want an even spaced layer of paint. This is all done wet on wet so the colors can blend. If you get too much red, just go back with the blush to lighten it in areas.

The plum color is done in the same manner. You want even fewer and more erratic splotches of the plum as you apply it.

 Once the base color of the monster skin is done to your liking, a small brush is used to apply the random splotches of Plum using the same paint/retarder mix. Be sure to vary the size, shape, and placement of the splotches.

Once the paint has dried, I decided that I want my pigmentation to be under the top layer of the skin. This gives a more natural look to the skin and protects the paint from getting damaged in transit. A layer of Translucent Liquid Sculpy is smeared on with my finger.

In this photo I am trying to show that the Translucent Liquid Sculpy is a thicker coat.  If you get too thick the TLS will become cloudy-white which works for some effects but not this one.

The TLS is cured with the heat gun.

 In this close-up you can see the dividing line between the painted area covered with TLS ( it has a slightly more brown look to it than the painted area. The Blush base is also toned down a little as you look through the layer of TLS. In person, it has a very cool look to it as you can see the paint is under the top layer of skin.
This makes great monster skin as well as really old people.
Hope you have enjoyed the tutorial. Next time I will do a little lesson on superheating just for my good friend Betty Lou in Naperville.
Have a great day!

Painting

The tentacles are finished on the demon so last night I sat down and had a painting party. I wanted to have a mottled skin look so I used three washes: "Blush" which is the same color as the clay. "Adobe Red", and "Plum" which is purple. Each used a formula of 2 parts retarder to 1 part acrylic paint. They were applied with a mop brush.
1. The entire figure was wet-down with the blush wash.
2. The Red wash was stippled into the  first wash.
3. I kept going back and forth with these stippling them until I had a mottled surface.
4. The plum color was stippled into the surface sparingly.
5. More layers of the blush wash were then added as needed to tone down the plumb.
6. Spots were added to the back, tentacles, and face using plum and blush.

The extender makes the plum colored spots more translucent so the underlying skin shows better.


























Once the paint dried, the entire figure was covered with Translucent Liquid Sculpy and cured with the heat gun so the skin has a see-through layer on top of the painting. The final step is to cover the tentacles with Sculpy Glaze which is allowed to puddle and will harden as drips on the tentacles.
The child is done with an Adobe Red and retarder wash, drybrush accents of Adode Red on the cheeks, nose, etc., and some shadowing around the eyes.

They will dry the rest of the day then on to costuming.
I would be happy to recreate the paint job with pictures if anyone out there asks.
Have a great day!
Mark

Tentacles!

Back to work now! When last we met, we had completed the child and the bulk of the demon. Let us join our sculpting project already in progress as we create tentacles for our critter.

 First we need to find a clay mix which lets the tentacles flex but uses a small amount of Bake and Bend clay (B&B clay is in very small packets so I need more to sculpt all the tentacles) I start with the pure B&B clay; on the left, and mix different ratios of bendable clay and ProSculpt until I have the sample on the right which is a ratio of 12 parts ProSculpt to 1 part bendable.

 You can see how flexible the pure B&B clay is.

 This is the 12:1 ratio sample which is still very flexible. This is the mix I decide to use for the project so I mix up a big batch and leech some of the oil out by placing it between sheets of printer paper for an hour.

The armature is prepared by adding 18gauge aluminum wire to the support rod for each tentacle.

 Cut a few strips of clay off the sheet of leeched clay and roll them into tapered tentacles. The tentacle is a round tube with a flattened bottom which will get suckers attached to the flat area. The tentacle slides onto the wire before attaching the suckers. 

 Another tube of clay is rolled out in a much smaller size which will become the suckers on the tentacles. Small pieces are cut off the tube for each sucker. the taper on the tube will let you start with small suckers at the tip of the tentacle and work your way to larger tentacles as you move to the thicker section of the tube.

The balls of clay are attached to the tentacle in two rows.

The sides of each sucker are seamed onto the tentacle.

The centers of the suckers need not be seamed to the tentacle. Here are the suckers ready to detail.

A ball stylus is used to indent the center of the sucker.

The left row of suckers has the centers indented. The lower tentacle shows the completed suckers.
Next time we will finish the tentacles and do the final fit to the demon body.
Have a great day!
Mark

White Rabbit

Hi there! Well, we all survived the show in Philly last week. Got to meet some great artists there: Sprite, and Linda to name two! Had a continuation of the party after that as Kelly and I got to host Maryanne Oldenburg and Diane Keeler at our home for a few days after the show. Love to rub elbows with the who's who of doll making! We had a great time sculpting in the studio for a few days and the three of us batted around ideas for this little guy while we worked on (of all things) dragons. Go figure!
So here is the White Rabbit to go with the Alice set. Look for the complete set at The Toy Shoppe!

 

A special thanks to Greg O. for being the inspiration for this!

 I'll get back to the child and the demon this coming week.  Have a great day!

Mark