I attended last weekend's Camden Comic Con at Rutgers in New Jersey (3/7/15) with Keith Gleason and Matt Herring. What a fun show! It was a one-day show and unlike most of the shows happening this day, it wasn't overrun with celebrities and high-end professional cosplayers. This was a really fan-centered and comic heavy show. Keith and Matt sold their books, Keith's Swamp Tales and Hero Envyand Matt's The Unofficial Doctor Who Companion. They both did well, by all reports.
I had my own merchandise at this show as well: Miyazaki figures! I am a fan of Miyazaki's work and, while I'm not an expert super fan, the characters he designed really speak to me. I whipped up some figures to sell at shows this year based on his creations. The figures themselves are on the small side because I want to keep things at an accessible price for fans and at a reasonable production level for myself.
First up is an army of No-Faces from Spirited Away. These little guys are roughly thumb sized and are solid Sculpey. They are $5 a piece and make perfect desk doo-dads or car companions. They were fun to make.
Next up is Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro. I love this chubby little guy! He is about 4" high and is a Sculpey skin over aluminum foil, epoxy-glued onto a birch base. $20.
Lastly, I made some Kodoma, the tree spirits from Princess Mononoke. I really enjoyed the repetitive, meditative nature of sculpting and placing all of the leaves. This is about 7" tall and is an aluminum armature, reinforces with Apoxie Sculpt for strength and sculpted with Sculpey. $50.
I already have some ideas for improving these sculptures. i will be switching from Sculpey brand glaze to a PYM II aerosol polymer-safe varnish.
Swamp Tales is an awesome comic-strip style comic book written and published by my amazing soon-to-be husband Keith Gleason (we're hoping for a wedding this spring if we can get our act together!) I have done several pieces of art for Swamp Tales but in this post I am going to focus on sculpture. You can read more about Swamp Taleshere.
When the first issue of Swamp Tales came out, Keith had an amazing cover drawn by the fantastically versatile Chris Gugliotti.
I just LOVE this illustration!
As you can see, Chris put his own style into the drawing and made it come to life . When I prepared to do some figures of the characters, I wanted to create a synthesis of Chris' drawing and Keith's drawings of the characters. The most notably different is Bucky the Beaver. Slither also has slightly different eyes. You can see the differences if you look at these panels:
So, here is my Bucky in progress. You'll notice that I did give him ears like the one Chris drew, but the nose and head shape is more like Keith's. This pic is interesting as I almost *never* think to take in-progress shots. You can also see some of my supplies in the background (Apoxie Sculpt.) The figure is an aluminum foil and wire armature with joints reinforced by Apoxie Sculpt and a skin of Super Sculpey over it. The paws and tail are also Apoxie.
Here is a close-up of Bucky's finished head.
Here is the finished sculpture with all three characters. They were all sculpted in a fashion similar to Bucky and painted with acrylic paint. I glued them to a log slice and added some Spanish moss which looks quite nice. I intended to make a sculpted sign but didn't have time, as I was sculpting this for a comic con.
I plan on taking a better pic at some point!
Keep an eye out for more of my Swamp Tales related art in the near future!
This is an art doll that I made in 2014. What exactly is an “art
doll”? I suppose there are various
definitions, but in my own work I consider any mixed media figurative
sculpture, especially those with some soft materials incorporated to be art
dolls. It’s a doll in that it is a figure, but it is art in that you can’t
*really* play with it.
I have always liked unicorns and fantasy art, and I had some
super soft brown mohair hanging around from the mermaids I made (you can see those here.) so I decided
to make a non-traditional unicorn (aka not white.)
The armature is threaded steel rods with aluminum foil and
aluminum wire, and it was sculpted with a mix of materials. The unicorn body is
primarily Super Sculpey Firm. The ears, hooves, grass and flowers are made of
Apoxie Sculpt. The eyes are lapis lazuli beads and the hair is the
aforementioned mohair. She was painted with acrylic paints. Glass and aluminum barrettes and red ribbon finish her
off. She stands about 16” high. I ended up donating her to a raffle for Broken Tail Rescue.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I have been a life-long fan of science fiction and horror. Some of my earliest memories are of watching "Doctor Who" with my father on PBS (Tom Baker is my favorite doctor. The first episode I remember was "Robot" which is Baker's first appearance.) I also very clearly remember being angry with my mother in 1979 when she wouldn't take me to go see a movie that I saw a commercial for on TV. This was the commerical:
I would have been 6 years old when I saw this which means two things: My mother showed good judgement and I was one weird kid!
Anyway, the whole point of this post is to share more artwork. In 2014 I made this little pen and ink, based on H.R. Giger's xenomorph from the "Alien" franchise. Seeing that early TV commercial really made an impact on me, I guess. I created this shortly before Giger's passing in May of 2014. Here it is framed and hanging. This was drawn for a special-theme show, "Guilty Pleasures." This is all I wanted to draw, though I wouldn't count sci-fi and horror as a "guilty" pleasure, really.
Prior to this, in 2012 I had entered another special-theme show, "Mailboxes." Instead of a nice bucolic roadside mailbox, I wanted to do something different. The idea for this piece came when I was thinking about mail... in space!!!
You will recognize this piece as the background art for my blog's header.
My airbrush was on the fritz (where it has remained for the past couple of years- those things are more trouble they they're worth sometimes) so I used some wet-on-wet techniques to create swirling nebulas and galaxies. This is acrylic on canvas, and rather small, measuring 8"x10" if I recall correctly.
Then I added my mailbox. I painted it to look roughly like a USPS box, with rockets, boosters and other spacey things. The lettering mimics different alien languages, mainly from Star Trek.
Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the finished work. I finished it up and it was barely dry when I framed it and brought it to the show. Someone purchased it at the show, so this pic is as good as it gets, I'm afraid.
Just a quick post to share some earrings I made. My good friend Beca (see her twitter here) was wearing some cool fantasy film fairy wing earrings when I hugged her too vigorously, bending the delicate film! So I made her some earrings to replace the damaged ones.
They are actually cicaida wings that I photographed and printed onto transparency film. I then sandwiched the fantasy film between the layers of transparency and voila! Wings!
I may be a klutz who breaks stuff from time to time, but at least I have the skills to repair or replace the things I break... usually.
I made her a large set and a small set. She has multiple ear piercings, so she could wear a full set in each ear if she wanted to :)
Here's me trying on the large ones- they are pretty big!
In 2012 a friend asked me to make some art dolls for his grandaughters. They had seen another mermaid doll that I had made on a whim, and requested two similar dolls. The intended recipients were 5 and 3 at the time, and they wanted one purple and one pink mermaid with "princess" elements.
They were made from Super Sculpey and Apoxie Sculpt over an aluminum armature. They are painted with acrylics with added Swarovski crystals, sea shells, pearls and super soft mohair braids. The tail fins are made from Fantasy Film over aluminum wire. By all reports, the girls were pleased with the gifts. These were a lot of fun to make. The full figures measured about 11" tall.
One of my awesome writer friends, Matt Herring (you can find his site here) is writing a new book and was looking for original artwork to add to it. I do love to help out a friend when I can! His book is entitled "Monkey see... Sea Monkey!" and is about an evil invasion of Sea Monkeys. From Matt's promotional page:
"MONKEY SEE... SEA MONKEY is a silly story I wrote that tells the story of an alien invasion from a ten year old's point of view. But instead of invaders from Mars... the invasion comes from Sea Monkeys... those loveable creatures that looked so much better in the comic books than in real life. But what if they grew big? And what if the only way to fight them was by using things found in the ads of comic books? That is where the fun begins!!! Taking place in 1978, Sea Monkeys have risen up in the small town of Broad Brook, CT and look to enslave the world, one little town at a time. With the 24 hour news cycle decades away, the story is told in 70's time; slow, innocent and without the frantic pace we live in today. When you are reading this gem you'll be able to hear the sounds of the Bee Gees, Wings and KISS!"
How could I pass up an opportunity to participate in a project like this?! I decided to draw a truly dangerous Sea Monkey, inspired by the WW2 warnings to GI's about feme fatale spies.So, consider this a sneak preview if you will- Here is my addition to Matt's book!
Ignore the PicCollage- I used the app to add the snazzy wood panel background. It's actually a rather fun iOS app that I would recommend downloading.
Here is a link to Matt's completed Kickstarter campaign with more information about the book:
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