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More in progress. I made Doll's corset and undies last night. The corset was a bitch to make. Had never used leather punch before, and lacing together such a small thing was pretty painful, especially when the little 'gromits' started popping off. Doll doesn't exactly fit into his corset, just don't tell him that. I started off with just two strips of leather that I measured using the draping method (if leather could drape.) The notch thing is where his left arm goes. Then I punched the holes.
Next I measured two stripes of red vinyl and attached them with Fabritac, hot glue and super glue, just to be safe.
Last I attached the gromity things and laced red cord through the front of the corset. I actually didn't have any small red cord at first and didn't realize this until late at night. Not wanting to take a trip to Wal-mart, I took apart a spare piece of intricate trim I had lying around. It worked.
(Also note the vinyl undies above, which were a hell of a lot easier to make.) After I had laced the corset through the front and placed it over his chest, I threaded more red cord through the back holes and pulled the whole thing tight with a bow. Side view, so you can see the alternating stripes:
And a back view, because apparently all of my blogs end with those. He's not really a thong man and I didn't want to cover up the kiss on his cheek, so he's sort of got a wedgie and his panties in a twist. That also works for him.
Tonight I've got to make his garter belt, his necklace, and a few other small details. Then all I will have left is his wings, his feather boa, and his ticket of authenticity.
I worked on Doll some more over the weekend. I am trying to finish him by the end of the week so that Paige can photograph him for me and I can take him with me to this minicomic festival in Athens called Fluke. Martyn wants to go to this thing so he can try and sell his own minicomics, and he told me if we get there early enough we should be able to snag and share a table. Comics about retards and inept redheads, sculptures of mythical creatures and transvestite fairies. What more could one want from a vendor? Even if we don't get a table I look forward to the nerd watching.
Also I haven't been to Athens in a while. It's a neat little town.So anyway, here are some more in-progress photos of Doll:
That's him fresh out of the oven. He now has a head and hands. He's holding the handle of what will be a whip in his right hand and he will have a feather fan in his left hand when he's all finished. A close up shot:
He looked entirely creepy in that stage with no color, no makeup, and no hair. The next thing I did was set up my workspace to blush him with Genesis paints. Genesis paints handle sort of like an oil based medium but only dry when activated by heat. They're commonly used by dollmakers because once they set it's almost as if they stain the clay itself. They don't chip off like acrylic and they are great for subtle drybrushing techniques like adding a bit of color and shading to a sculpture. I just bought a sample set of a few colors because a little goes a long way. Here is everything on my desk.
(Note Strongbow.)
And as always, my faithful Loon by my side:
I always pull up a chair for her because she's my business partner and likes to oversee all of my projects. That's my chair on the right.
And here is Doll, blushed and ready for his last trip to the oven:
After he cooled down a bit I painted him again, this time with acrylic. I use acrylic for more detailed work like makeup and tattoos. For glossy lips and eyes, I use my well kept secret ingredient: nail polish!
As you can see below, he's got hairy legs and a Rocky Horror style prison tattoo on his right thigh. In the photo he is trying on his new shoes, which were originally white Barbie platform heels with pink flowers over the toe. After a failed attempt at sculpting the shoes myself, I drove all over the world looking for what one might think would be easy to find: classic black Barbie pumps. Apparently the only doll that even wears those anymore is the original 1960's swimsuit Barbie that has been re-released for Barbie's 50th anniversary. I have never been a fan of dolls but unfortunately I have a heart, so there is no way I could ever buy a Barbie just to mug her of her shoes--especially one as classic as swimsuit Barbie. So I just had to modify those white shoes that came separately in a pack of Barbie clothes. It was a major pain--they had gay little ankle straps that I had to cut off with an exacto knife, the black spraypaint wouldn't dry or adhere to the plastic for some reason, so I pretty much ended up just using nail polish again. Apparently nail polish has many uses. I think they turned out great, really trantastic.
Doll also has a heart on his left shoulder that reads, "Ma." It was a fresh tattoo in this picture so still pretty shiny.
Then yesterday I made his fishnets:
Complete with seams, tears and runs:
And last night Paige came over to watch Neverending Story, and I wigged him:
He's got that sort of Marilyn Monroe/Deborah Harry/pinup thing going on:
He's also got copious amounts of chest, arm, and leg hair. He's not a natural blonde.
The whip:
The shoe:
The butt:
Note the kiss of Quarley. Tonight I am going to see how far I can get on his outfit. Also I have to remember to tattoo his knuckles--they're supposed to read "Doll Face" but I guess I forgot to get around to it. Anyway, more soon to come.
Here I am again, back from a fun weekend and ready to post all of the crap I have been working on between friend visitations and my joke of a full-time job. I will bitch about that some more on Myspace whenever I can, but for now I am too furious to talk about it and will only say that cleaning up after stupid rich people has been taking up a lot of my time over the past week. Therefore I am running a bit behind on these posts so you get to be bombarded by a ton of pictures in this blog as I try to catch up. It's better than nothing though, right? (Rhetorical question.)
As mentioned in my last blog, I've started drawing Pinky Dandy again to refresh my memory of his strange proportions. I am doing this because I think it's about time that Pinky gets Facebook (and possibly Myspace,)so he will need to have some profile pictures. I mean if my Dad and his old college friends and Yoko Ono all have Facebook then there is pretty much no excuse for Pinky Dandy not to have it. Enough people know of him that he'd probably end up with more friends than me. All I have so far is some sketches that I did to get back into the groove. They're not great, but they were helpful.
The classic facial expressions sketch dump:
Pinky full body shot, looking ticked off as usual:
And then there's this one. I know this pose doesn't make any sense; I was just trying to get a feel for how his body bends. It almost looks like he is dancing. Lamely.
The other project I am working on is my Glam Fairy #4, Doll. He's just a sweet transvestite from New York that's lookin' for a kiss. I saw these fabulous sparkly shoes at Plato's closet in my size (trannie medium,) and it was at that moment that Doll came to me. He was also inspired by The New York Dolls, Rocky Horror, Moulin Rouge, Emily Howard from the show Little Britain, some other unconvincing transvestites in my Mick Rock Glam book, and old-timey Burlesque fashion. This was the first sketch I did of him, before he even had wings:
Then I later I designed his wings to go with the whole red and black corset theme:
Last I tried to figure out a pose. Something classic and pinup because he is inside an enormous glittery pink shoe, after all. I bullshitted this drawing but I just wanted to get the general idea down:
I had already gathered some supplies from Joann's a while back--red and black lace, feathers, trim, etc. This week I started on the armature. It's just twisted wire and that magical farenheight epoxy putty from Home Depot. Here the shoe is pictured in the background:
And here is Doll's 'skeleton' inside of the shoe:
This was Doll will the first layer of Sculpey. I have started baking my sculptures after finishing each area instead of just doing it all in one complete trip to the oven. That way I can sort of 'save' what I have done before I move on, especially when working with super soft and melty clay. His skin color is a bit strange because it's elephant gray Sculpey III and Dolphin Studio by Sculpey mixed together because I couldn't make up my mind. I like it though.
I decided he looked somewhat womanly with the narrow chest and round butt, so tonight I built up his pecs and sculpted the rest of his arms and legs.
The point is that he is not a very convincing crossdresser.
Here is Doll in that shoe again. He's gotten so buff lately that he hardly fits anymore. Will have to get creative with the pose.
Last I will leave you with a little treat. I don't know why, but I always love my fairies' butts. They're so cute!
Yeah...blogs are lame, but as time went by I came to the realization that I have got to get one. I mean, other than that screechy-whiny thing I have on Myspace of course. That one can continue to mark the progress of my mental instability, this one can be an in-progress of actual, 'legitimate' artwork. I am used to keeping physical journals and have done nearly all my life, complete with hand-drawn illustrations of every day's oddities. Unfortunately, those take a lot longer to write, don't include the option of posting images of my stuff, and don't get me nearly as much attention. I do love attention. So there you have it--modern world 1, old world 0. Drat again.
Anyway, as far as this blog having a point goes, I did recently complete some artwork. As a reward for Martyn for his pimping of my portfolio website I promised him a drawing of whatever his heart desired. Apparently his heart desired me to draw a group shot of the famous Fab Four. That seemed like a fairly normal request, the Beatles maniac that he is. However, nothing is ever normal with Martyn, and he told me that he wanted them all to be morbidly obese and called the Flab Four ("the all-fat-guy-Beatles-tribute-band.") I sighed, did the drawing, and when I presented it to him he simply could not stop laughing. Like for five minutes. He really has a mental deficiency. I would post the drawing in this blog but I made the mistake of not scanning it first and leaving it up to him to email me the file. He hasn't done it yet because he is probably still laughing. Ah well, another time, I promise.
I also need to get a photo of a sculpture I completed late last night. I knew that Paige wanted a fairy from me for her birthday so I drew up a few designs in my sketchbook and let her pick one. She chose a hideous winged creature that was strongly based on her hideous cat, Stella. I finished it around one in the morning, which is coincidentally the same time that Paige and Hutch arrived at my house to stay the night because of a massive fire that broke out in the street near where they live and caused all of the power to go out in their area. I sort of just handed the thing to her as she came in the door without photographing it first, but luckily Paige happens to be a photographer, so I'm sure that something can be arranged.
What I do have are pictures of some other drawings by Martyn's request that are theoretical sketches of what Marc Bolan might have looked like if he had not had the accident and was still around today. He would have been sixty-one years old.
That's not a tie, it's one of those riding scarves that people used to wear driving around the turn of the century--those are cool. He actually looks a bit pissed off to me, which isn't very him, so I also decided to make a less serious version:
Now he's wearing that ridiculous unicorn shirt from Threadless.com. I don't know how plausible that is, but it seems to suit him somehow.I guess I might as well post my other fairy sculptures here too, even though it's been over a month since I finished the last one. For those of you that don't know, I'm working on a series of polymer OOAK (that's ebay for one-of-a-kind, or no molds used) fairy figures that are based on 70's rock and alternative fashion. I call them Glam Fairies, although not all of them are Glam and not all of them are really fairies. I just liked the name. This is the first one I made, the Ziggy Fairy:
The idea is that he's not really Ziggy, he's just a fairy impersonating him because fairies like rock and roll and are possibly the inventors of Glam Rock (which would explain why it is so sparkly.)
Then there is Puke, the Unidentified Flying Bastard:
He prefers his beer bubble-side down and uses his magic spittle to reverse the polarity of the drink so that the foam is on the bottom. Unfortunately his spittle also contains a mild toxin that ensures that if your beer is the unfortunate one he chooses to drink from, it will be your last of the night before running off to the toilet.And lastly there is Hickey, "The World's Smallest, Dumbest Groupie":
She steals lipstick out of purses, wears entirely too much of it, commonly mistakes people for her favorite rock stars, and then leaves a trademark greasy stain on the neck to distinguish her love from the affections of other groupies. The mark bears her name and is impossible to remove for several days or even cover up with concealer.Well I guess that's it for now. I also have an Etsy store:
Check that out while you're waiting for me to post those other things I mentioned. So...um...bye!
