Quadrophenia, Transvestitism, and more Anarchy

I got Devon from Junkman's to pose this time with my Anarchy in Purple wings. Paige took the photos in and around my apartment.

They are now for sale on Etsy.

Meanwhile at Trader Joe's I was working on stuff for the latest Flyer, which dropped yesterday. The theme was early 1960's mod, the slogan was "Be Seen on the Green." I was assigned to make the big sign for the vestibule, or front entrance. It was supposed to be some new products sunning themselves in the park with sunglasses on and avoiding the paparazzi. The color scheme was orange, avocado green, and beige. I was also meant to make two decorative pieces to flank the vestibule sign that are giant polaroid photos of the products "getting caught." This is what I came up with.









You might be able to tell I watched the movie Quadrophenia while making this. Martyn and I decided if we had lived in those days he would have been a mod and I would have been a rocker, so I guess we would have had to have had a forbidden romance. Since I seem to side with the rockers so much I had to include some of them in my vestibule sign, even though in real life mods and rockers may have sooner killed each other than relax in a park together. I guess depicting gang wars is not exactly up to Trader Joe's standards.

Speaking of Trader Joe's, recently we were promoting Goddess dressing by having two crew members dress up as Goddesses and roam the store with samples. Here they are getting ready in the break room, and why I love working in Midtown.


Stephen is the one on the left and an experienced drag queen. He had to do Danny's makeup because it was his first time. I love how nervous Danny looks in this picture.


Stephen leans back to look at his work while Danny tests it out.


The wig (or "the rat".)


Jen is in the background here "mouth breathing".


And finally, enter the Goddess!


Danny totally rocked that role. So did Stephen the following day, despite my lack of pictures.

Doll Complete

Later I will post real quality pictures on Deviantart, Etsy and the like. Paige was going to photograph him tonight but the SCAD photo room was closed mysteriously. Go figure.

I also have written the story/description of Doll for anywhere I plan on posting him. Here it is:

GLAM FAIRY # 4: DOLL

Meet Doll. He’s just a sweet transvestite from New York that’s looking for a kiss. Formally known as Frank Fratelli, he was named after Frank Sinatra and has gone by many other names over the years. Among the members of the notorious and extended Fratelli family his nickname was Frankie. Despite how tough the family ‘business’ could get at times, Frankie’s skin was always so nice and smooth, his boyish face intact. For this reason he was often called Frankie Dollface, or sometimes just Doll for short. It has never been considered a good thing in the family to a pretty boy, but the Fratellis do take pride in their expensive suits and haircuts. Always looking professional no matter how dirty the job gets is a major aspect of the Fratelli creed. Doll just takes it one step farther by raiding women’s closets. He particularly loves shoes. I found him basking in my left shoe one day (I think he was attracted to the glitter) and he told me his life story. That is how I know his secret—that he is Frankie Dollface by day, and The Incomparable Doll by night in the local burlesque clubs. Now that you also know his secret I would suggest that you do not tell anyone else. Doll would not like to disappoint his mother and may be forced to make you say hello to his little friend.

Doll is number four in my Glam Fairies series. He is sculpted out of a special mixture of Studio by Sculpey and Sculpey III polymer clays over a strong metal armature. He is six and a half inches long in his reclining position and would be approximately eight inches tall if he were standing. Doll’s dark brown eyes are made of glass. His platinum blonde hair is extremely soft and fine because it is made from a cultivated silk brick. His skin has been lightly blushed with Genesis paints, his tattoos then inked in acrylic. He has a large heart on his left pectoral that reads “Ma”, knuckle tattoos that read “Dollface”, and a Rocky Horror style prison tattoo on his right thigh. The signature red kiss of Quarley that identifies him as a one-of-a-kind edition to the Glam Fairies line is located on his right cheek (no, not on his face.) Doll is wearing a real corset that has been crafted from leather. His undies are black vinyl; his garter belt and fishnets are recycled lace and tulle. Doll’s wings are made of pretty much all of the above and are flexible so that they can wrap around him while he is resting or unfurl when he is ready for flight. Doll’s shoes are Barbie heels that have been painted and modified to suit his needs. In his left hand he holds a feather fan and in his right hand he wields a whip. Doll comes with a ticket of authenticity that has been autographed by the artist and a copy of the original sketch when he was still in the design phase. He is very talkative and would like to share his story with whoever adopts him, or whoever will listen to him. He has pretty much moved into my shoe by now and has even constructed a makeshift bed out of an old feather boa from one of his performances. I would ask him to leave, but I don’t want to die.

Doll In Progress: Baking, Painting, Wigging

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.

The Creation Of Doll And The Return Of Pinky

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!