Unicorn Skull Finished!

("Unicorn Skull" Plaster 2014)

It's finally finished! My lovely unicorn skull. I just needed to smooth over the texture, paint it, and go over it all with a shiny gloss coating. This is going to look great on a bookshelf or a mantle piece somewhere. The perfect macabre decoration for any study, library, haunted mansion, laboratory, or little girl's bedroom. Im still wondering if I should add glitter....

I got this great old metal gear to use as a stand. I'm not sure what the gear originally came from, some kind of machine. All I know is it's solid steel and is REALLY heavy. Probably not good for a wall shelf but it should be okay on something sturdier like a book shelf or mantle. It makes an interesting juxtaposition between the feminine pink color and the heavy dark metal. I also appreciate how the skull looks like it's wearing some kind of frilly black neck brace.

Unicorn Skull

("Unicorn Skull" 2014 plaster & cardboard)

So Ive been working on this process of building plaster replicas of animal skulls. I've done a few so far and Im really starting to get the hang of it. I start by making the skull shape out of cardboard, styrofoam, tape, and wires. Then when I have the basic shape down, I just go over it with plaster gauze. How fucking great is plaster gauze?! Love that stuff.

Anyway, this was the first horse skull I've tried so far. Im pretty exited about it. It's not quite finished yet though, It needs a bit more plaster here and there (notice the bottom teeth aren't finished) and then I'm going to paint it. I usually just go over each skull with a thick layer of off-white paint, it's mostly just to give the surface a smoother texture rather than looking all paper mache. However, since this is a unicorn skull and all, I'm somewhat tempted to go over it in pink or purple and cover it in glitter... hmmmm.

Oh and incase anyone was wondering the horn is actually just a seashell.

Snowman Skeleton!!

So these are just some basic blue prints for a new idea I had the other day. I want to weld together a snowman skeleton. It would be sort of like a metal scarecrow. One end will stick into the ground and I'll pile snow up around the rest of it like a regular snowman complete with metal top hat and arms. BUT as the days go on and the snow begins to thaw, the steel skeletal form beneath (which will be covered in rust at that point so as to look extra creepy) shall be revealed to all! It's guaranteed to slowdown all passers-by and frighten children of all ages! =) I cant wait to get started!

Love Bears

One of my favorite teddies to date A few years ago I bought a cheap red hooded sweatshirt from a department store, XXL, cut it up, and made a handful of these little guys to sell. I'd like to make some more one of these days, maybe around valentines day. Not sure I'll use shards of aluminum as teeth next time though... not very safe.

Kitty

("Kitty" 2014, Photoshop)

Look I drawed a kitty =)

Horror Huggies; The Movie

("Disney's Horror Huggies" 2012 Paint & Photoshop)

There is no actual Horror Huggies movie, but how friggin' cool would that be? Am I right? I'm just a big fan of 2D animation, particularly classic Disney style. I wanted to make an illustration telling a narrative of some toys trying to get out of a toy store. I used a similar process that Disney animators use. The background is painted as one layer. The painterly quality makes it sort of blurry and not as sharply rendered as the characters, which helps them stand out from the background. It's a pretty common trick in photography and painting as well as animation. I then drew the characters on a piece of tracing paper, uploaded them to my laptop, and colored them in in Photoshop. The outlines, instead of just black, are all darker versions of what ever color the character is. The bear is outlined in dark brown, the bunny in dark purple. This helps the character look cleaner and more like part of the scene, while still clearly being 2D. I've always been interested in animation, although I don't think I would have the patience necessary to make cartoons. That stuff takes a LOT of work. But it was nice to see what Horror Huggies might look like in a cartoon form. 

The idea here was to draw the soul of an abused and forgotten toy rising out, sort of breaking out of a shell. I think I would like to do another piece like this with more of a background to add to that narrative, but at the time, I thought it would be best to concentrate on the three creatures. 

I decided to give each one a primary color, blue, yellow, and red. Partly to separate them from each other, but also because that specific combination of colors is a very common pallet used in plastic children's toys, and I so it seemed entirely appropriate given that these things are rising out of a broken toy.