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Hey--I just thought I'd drop by to say what I'm working on now. I don't have much time to write before I go to work but it's going to be a Marc Bolan fairy riding a swan. First I made the swan out of a large styrofoam egg, rabbit fur, feathers, fluffy pipe cleaners, wire, leather and Fimo. Before:
After:
I wanted to take in-between photos but I had lost my camera until yesterday. The swan is pretty big, in case you can't tell--not quite life-sized but about the size of a large seagull at least. I need to get someone to hold the camera for me next time because I can't even get the whole thing in the shot!
Unfortunately it really looks like a dead bird on my desk.
And a close up:
Oops, gotta go--to be continued!
Ok, I'm back, and I plan to spend today (my day off) working on Marc. So far I've just made his head. Here are the pictures I took of it yesterday after I found the camera:
The likeness is alright I suppose, though it's hard to tell with no eyebrows or his signature hair. Also keep in mind that his face is roughly the size of a thumbnail, so it was pretty difficult to sculpt a portrait that tiny. I made this out of a half and half Super Sculpey-Cernit mix, by the way, and the color of the Cernit clay is 'biscuit'. It's a really nice mix since the bisquit is a little too light for Marc's skin tone and the flesh color of the Super-Sculpey is a little too dark. Also I've found that the Cernit is super hard to mold but helps retain small details because it stays in place so well, while the Sculpey is really easy to work with normally but can be frustratingly soft for realism at this scale. The mix I'm using has the best of both clays.
Marc after I gave him ears. If you've ever seen a picture of Marc with his ears showing you might know how they're a little elfish naturally, though I did exaggerate them a bit. His eyes are glass and from Jerry Hutchins at glasseyesonline.com, the same manufacturer that sent me his defects for my Ziggy fairy. Eyes from this guy always look unnervingly realistic when they are in a sculpture. He's also really reasonably priced--this is his store.Marc's eyes are his '3mm green'.
Now that he is baked the Marc head is awaiting me on my desk in a creepy fashion:
Better get back to work.
At long last, I am back. This has really been the year from hell, or rather a really bad and depressing book of my life that is finally over. Not my life, the author's depression or sadism or whatever it was that made them want to write about my dog dying right after I graduated college, my dismal long-distance relationship as I lived with my parents in suburbia for a year and waited for Martyn to get out of Savannah, my Dad's cancer incident, the horrific jobs, job hunting, and job transitioning, various family drama, Martyn's also difficult job hunt, and finally the battle with Martyn's parents to cosign for him so we could move into the apartment (which was only defeated by Devon's father who swooped in out of the blue and handled it before we had to wait another minute for them to cooperate.) Now we are IN THERE and it's FUCKING AWESOME. After we had already waited a year just to be together we decided not to rush into things and settle for the first place we saw. Martyn was, after all, still looking for a job at that point. So we had a look around and didn't even have to look that far until we found THE ONE. It's a mile from my work and right behind Little Five, which was the major thing. We don't even have to drive there if we don't feel like it--which is super convenient because Martyn now works at Junkman's Daughter. Our place was built in the 50's, so even though it's an apartment it feels like one of my old houses--hardwood floors that squeak, firestone-mug-green tiles in the bathroom, black and white checkered floor in the kitchen, brass doorknobs, clumpy white lead paint in the windowsills and everything. We painted it before we moved all our stuff in with bright, solid comic book colors. We even got a retro 1950's diner bar table and chairs and a cat clock with a swinging tail to go in our smurf-blue kitchen. Everything about our place is completely badass, even our shower curtain (which is covered with classic Sailor Jerry tattoo flash.) Our living room is green, our art room is bright yellow (WE HAVE AN ART ROOM), our bedroom is fire engine red with black and white striped bedding. Everywhere you look there are action figures, fairies, posters, CDs and records. I love it. Anyway...
Now that I'm getting my own life back I plan on creating more artwork. If you recall, this one's been on hold ever since before I got my new job (which is going well, thanks for inquiring.) It only needed another like ten minutes left until it was finished, but chaos pretty much ruled over everything until now. So here it is. More soon to come.
So if you couldn't guess from my lack of posts over the last month, I got the job! My ingenious plan of standing out against the other applicants and actually making a "chalkboard sign" out of a piece of black foam core (I painted it to look like it had a three dimensional wooden frame around it and everything) as part of my application apparently worked really well. Since I had applied at Trader Joe's before and had really gotten the feel for their aesthetic, I just mimicked that on the board--the lettering, the placement of the "product" (i.e. me) and the price, the colors, etc. I even lifted a few things from their website, like the vintage pub sign pointing hand motif. The message read something like: Bailey Quillin--reliable, creative, 100% organic, hire me! I researched some art nouveau posters, Indian art, and Victorian etchings for inspiration. Brian Webster found it amusing and hired me a few days later. He didn't even mess around with my pay--I now make $3 an hour more than I did at Arvid, have more hours, and soon will have medical and dental as well.
I was totally busy and exhausted at first because for two weeks I was working both jobs with no days off at all. Trader Joe's needed me to start right away so working at the cabin on my few off days was the most "notice" I could possibly give Arvid. It worked out well though, because on my last day there we found out the paint we had been using for the corks contained a dangerous toxin that has already been banned in the state of California and can only be handled in outdoor spaces for short periods of time while wearing a full body suit and gloves. We of course had been painting in a basement with no warning, no masks, and no gloves. The ventilation system they have in the studio is for oil paints (larger air particles) so the filter was useless against this stuff. We actually left early that day because Heather, the new studio assistant that had been hired the week before, finally broke down after having severe headaches, breathing problems, and disorientation since day one. This happened to coincide with Maggie and Tye feeling ill all the way up on the third floor from nasea, headaches, and feeling like their "eyes were popping out." That was the day we decided to research what they had given us to work with on the internet and evacuate the premises until further notice. Lucky for me I got to evacuate forever. Plus, when I stopped at the Starbucks down the road to try and get rid of my headache, I ran into Francisco, a friend I used to work with at Outback that I hadn't seen since and was oddly just wondering what had happened to him moments before. It was meant to be, and we hung out a few times since. It was a nice distraction to have while dealing with my Dad's surgery, which went as well as possible, by the way. He is now out of the hospital and on his way to recovery. He's got to recover; I bought him a gift card to go hangliding in Chattanooga and that requires some physical exertion.
So between my infinitely better new job, my Dad's surgery, and a random couple of visits from Martyn to see a Spinal Tap concert (awesome) and Devon to wish that she lived here, I've been pretty distracted. I am probably going to be for the next few months actually as Martyn sporadically visits to find a job so we can find a place and move in together. He's arriving this Thursday actually, to stay for a week of searching. Hope it goes well. In the meantime I worked a smidgeon on that second Pinky Myspace photo, and hope to do more soon. First there was the watercolored version that I spoke of (blank white spaces have been cleaned up digitally):
And here's the painting with the base colors blocked in. That's all I have so far.
So I finished that painting of Teddy. It's on watercolor board, which I have never used before but I found out that I really like it. Unfortunately it was a bit too big and bulky to put in my scanner. So here's a crappy photo of it instead:
I also watercolored the background of Pinky Dandy's second internet whoring photo this weekend. I had previously scanned in the painted version to begin the whole tweakage process, but then Photoshop had to go and quit unexpectedly so I lost everything I had done so far. Thankfully it wasn't that much. I am at work now so I can't re-scan it at the moment, but here's the penciled version anyway:
Tomorrow morning I have an interview arranged with Brian Webster, the manager of Trader Joe's in midtown Atlanta for the position of in-store sign artist. Man I hope I get it.
Here's Pinky's first profile picture for Myspace and Facebook. I am going to try to do one of these a week, so this week's already taken care of. This weekend I am going to paint a portrait of a neighbor's corgi, Teddy. He is recently deceased due to pretty tragic circumstances and he was like a son to this lady, who doesn't have any actual children. A few neighbors went in and commissioned me to do a painting of Teddy for her. I'm thinking watercolors because they are by far the most delicate and sentimental medium. So that's my next project-within-a-project.
Lolz!
