Just Add Skulls!

Back when I was first starting out as a creepy toy maker, I learned very quickly that the best way to make an interesting and faintly disturbing looking toy was to remove it's head and replace it with a skull. It's incredibly simple and not terribly imaginative, but the results are always fun to see. This particular rabbit I won at a carnival/rave that was being held one warm summer night, on the deck of an old battle ship in Salem Massachusetts. Fire jugglers, glow in the dark wands, face painting stations, and scores of people dancing and grinding underneath two enormous tank barrels! I popped a balloon with a dart on my first try and won the aforementioned rabbit, whom I immediately named Raziel.

 About a month or so later, I was on my way to a Halloween party, for which I had been asked to bring some of my toys for decoration, and as I was packing a few popular favorites, I found Raziel sitting next to one of the many plastic skulls I had recently bought (I stock up on them every year around Halloween) So I quickly grabbed my scissors and my glue gun and within 10 minutes I had new and improved Raziel.

Smiley

("Smiley" 2013, fleece and aluminum)

"Hello Clarice."

This was a custom bear, made for a friend of mine who is a particularly large fan of the Batman villain, Joker.

This is far from the first toy I've made with sharp aluminum teeth. Pointy metal jaws used to be a staple in all my toys. I stopped using it as much, not because it was unsafe (there is no sweeter irony than making a cuddly toy that can not be cuddled) but because the only way to get aluminum teeth to stick to a bear is with a hot glue gun, and since many of the teeth I made were quite small (unlike this example) it was VERY tricky to glue the teeth in place without getting glue stains all over the fabric. Of course, the toys I make do have a sort of hand-stitched quality to them and that's completely intentional, but glue stains on fabric is much different than sloppy stitching, or button eyes, or torn and patched fabric. There's something artificial and tacky about glue stains.

Anyway, Smiley here is one of my absolute favorites and incidentally, has no glue stains. He's made of fleece which is a great fabric for making toys if you ever feel like giving it a try. It is not only soft and easy to sew, but it's surprisingly firm and holds it's shape, which is why Smiley's grin holds so well on his face.

Remember kids,

Smile and the world smiles with you.

Dragon Slayer

("Dragon Slayer" 2014, Photoshop)

Every time I look at this picture, Whitney Huston's iconic "I Will Always Love You" starts playing in my head... not the whole song of course just the main chorus.

"AND IIIIIIIIIIII WILL ALWAYS LOOOVE YOOOOoooOOOUUUUuuUUUU!!"

I don't really have much to say about this picture. It's just a fun, silly illustration I thought you would all enjoy.

Bear-napped

("Bear-napped" 2013 acrylic and ink)

Why does everything I love get carried away by demons? This is why I can't have nice things!

The struggle is real.

If you've looked through a few of my previous posts by now, you've probably noticed that most of the illustrations I post are done in Photoshop. This is due to several reasons. My laptop is portable and so I can work on Photoshop anywhere at anytime. There is no mess or clean up with Photoshop, and it allows me to highlight and change colors and settings faster than with traditional painting. However, despite my appreciation for Photoshop, there is something about traditional painting that I find very enjoyable. I love the amount of control I have with the brush, and the random blends and textures that I get by mixing and applying paint directly can't be imitated using photoshop. Before I had digital programs, I did all my illustrations with acrylic or water color, then did the outlines and details with ink. Now, when I do traditional paintings like this, I go over the paint with ink and copic markers. If you enjoy illustration they are a great tool to look into, though they are expensive.

Painting with acrylic is something I enjoy doing once in a while, and once I get the paints, brushes, water, easel, etc, set up, it can be very relaxing. In fact, I am planning on doing a speed-painting video (like this one) for this blog soon. I'm going to start filming it next week. Hopefully I can get the painting finished in one afternoon and have the video edited in time to post it the same day!

Garden Gnomes Are Evil

("Vermin" 2013, Photoshop)

Of all the plastic and ceramic creatures in the world of lawn ornaments, the garden gnome is by far the shiftiest and least trustworthy of them all. With their beady little eyes and their pointy hats, they stare out at you, smiling as if they've just secretly poisoned you. 

I've never trusted lawn gnomes, which is why I have never used Travelocity. Anywhere a gnome wants to send you can't be good.

It is also why I drew this picture. Some may look at it and immediately assume that the zombie rodent is the monster, but the smart ones will know that the real villain is the one carrying the beast, and smiling absently as if nothing is wrong...

Tea Party

("Tea Party" 2013, Photoshop)

This is another example of a doodle that ended up becoming a finished illustration. 

Once again toys, tea parties, and general wonderland-ocity are abundant, and once again I have put a little bow tie and top hat on a teddy bear. I will not stop until real bares everywhere take the hint.

Side note, I am working on a real version of this chair in my spare time. If it comes out well enough I may make a whole set.

Bunnysaurus

("Bunnysaurus" 2013, plastic)

In my studio, I make a point of keeping boxes and boxes of random toy parts within reach of my work desk. Doll heads, teddy bear bodies, action figure limbs, jars of stuffed animal noses and eyes, etcetera, etcetera. That way, when I'm working on a new project, or if I just feel like making something but don't have any ideas, I can just pick up a couple of body parts and hold them up to one another and see what looks comical or strange enough to work. In this case I held up a bunny head to the body of a dinosaur and thought HELL YES! Then grabbed a length of plastic tubbing from another box I keep full of various hardware parts. I still have the rest of that rabbit and the head of that dinosaur lying around someplace. I suppose the obvious thing would be to attach the dinosaur head to the bunny's body and make them a set... but I'm pretty sure I could find something more ridiculous to put on a bunny's body.

In any case, this amalgamation certainly came out wonderfully.