finished with the bobbleheads

This was a fun project. I'm glad I did it. I am very happy with these. If I had to say what the weakest part of them is I would say that the profiles could be stronger. Anyways, here's the final result:

progress on the wedding cake topper

Got some feedback from the client and she was unhappy about the size of the noses on the bobbleheads. I trimmed them down and slimmed down the bride. I think they look 100% better and am pretty excited about the outcome. I am painting them tomorrow.

Printed out the painting and it looks pretty good too. I'm ready to go with this.

wedding couple sculpture

Here are some photos of the progress. The clay is called Kneed-O and is paper based so it's (I assume) somewhat natural i.e. safer for use on a wedding cake in my assumption than the plastic cake. Although I could simply put a piece of cardboard underneath the plastic clay for future projects of this kind. This is a test run for something I have been wanting to offer officially on the website for a long time now. I did a few of these back in the day for friends of mine but have no photos that are good enough for the website.

In the first step, after drawing them up and studying their faces, I started on the heads. I did not go overboard with the detail because this clay will be painted and the little details will look much better painted than they will if I were to use this clay to make them. This clay is not the best for details. It's kinda, um... chewy for lack of a better word. It isn't as reliably pliable as I would have thought it would be (unlike sculpey). It dries out kinda fast and I have not worked with it before so even though the packaging says that it "dries like porcelain" I need to see it first... The hair was added a whole 12 hours or more after the head was created. I was hoping it would have dried out already. It didn't but was dry enough so that my messing with all the curls didn't wreck what I had already sculpted. You might also notice that I changed some of the features of the girls face so that it was a little softer. Here are the heads:











Once again, here is a picture of the bride to be and groom:


For the bodies, I definitely wanted to go for that big head little body thing which posed obvious balancing and structural problems. I lucked out and the first idea I had worked fine. I put a metal brace inside the body to connect it to the head which stabilized the whole thing. Here are the bodies:









My intention was not to make the bride look as thick as the sculpture seems to indicate at this point in production. It is difficult with this though because the bottom half of the sculpture has to support the heavy upper half. The groom looks to me to be pretty skinny or muscularly built and the body of his sculpture is somewhat heavier looking too. I hope that this translates as appearing "cute" rather than "fat". I plan on trying to slim her body down a bit when the clay dries enough that I will not crush everything I have done already when I try to carve into it. The dress was another problem...



The way this dress is made could be a potential disaster to do in clay! I ended up smoothing it out so that it appeared to be all wavy and ruffled at the bottom without being distracting. Hope it is appreciated.

There were several obstacles to this project. The hair, the dress, the flowers and also the tiara. I will post the painted sculptures when they are finished.

When they are done, I'll let you know. : )

been a while

I have a couple of new things to post and some news... Here is the latest thing I have done. It is for a couple who is getting married this Saturday. It's for a sign in board. I am also going to do a sculpture of them for a cake topper which will be pretty cool. I've done these before but do not have photos of them so this is going to be for the website. The photos were not perfect and I had to guess on the bride's hair. I hope it looks right! I did it kinda dark so I didn't have to put much detail into the hair, but the sculpture is going to be a bit trickier... I'd like to offer a wedding package in the future with both of these and some other extras that you cannot find anywhere else. I really like to draw at weddings. They are so fun. It's like you are being invited to some family's greatest party ever and everybody there wants to meet you! : ) I love being a caricature artist.



Here's a photo of the couple getting married



This wedding of course comes the day before the NCN Convention where I plan on being for all of next week and hopefully returning with the title of "world's fastest caricaturist". It's going to be a pretty big deal this year I think. Not that I have anything to compare it to but from what I have heard, this one is going to be really competitive. There will be over 200 other artists from around the world competing this year and I'm pretty sure that 14 seconds is not unheard of in this competition. I know I can do that but I am a little worried about what others are bringing to the table! *whew!*

Last week and a couple of weeks ago I had the oppertunity to do retail caricatures a couple of times for a guy named Jason. It was fun hanging out with him, Walt and my good friend Ron Kantrowitz too. I spent last weekend at the York County Fair and it rained almost all week long... It sucked. I had fun though and made out OK considering.

Anyways, here is another illustration from a couple of weeks back that I thought I'd post. This client was one of the nicest clients I have ever had. Just nice as pie. Loved the caricature right off the bat. Paid upfront and gave me swell photos to use. Couldn't ask for a better client. This guy here was retiring.