The Naked Silo

Unravel Me 2 16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2009, private collection Unravel Me 15" x 22", watercolour, 1998, private collection In the watercolour version painted over a decade ago, I superimposed the model over some Egyptian ruins for added mystery. Interestingly, the oil version is pretty mysterious without the ruins but with enhanced lighting (like in Fuel 2 ) and a moodier colour palette. The model for these is very thin and, since you can see more of her lower body in the oil version, I cheated her hips and upper thighs, widening them a bit to achieve more of an "hourglass figure" look. The background in the watercolour version is black and white and the sky was left white. This creates a nice wedge of negative space at the top, but I'm not sure if it reads as "black & white background and colour figure" as clearly as I intended. I tried this with another painting (same model, different Egyptian background). I ...

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2009, private collection Over a year ago, I posted the original watercolour painting of Fuel with the larger, abstracted oil on canvas version and I mentioned at the end that I had done this other version. I linked to my Etsy shop once that was up and running this summer, but I still hadn't posted a picture of the new painting here. I love the deep red background and it complements the greens of the sweater and bottle very nicely. I played with the lighting this time and exaggerated the brightness at her shoulder and had the light drop off somewhat toward the bottom to exaggerate the shadows (clearly going for a bit of a Phile Hale look to the lighting). Concurrently with this painting, I made another "oil translation" of an existing watercolour featuring the same model in the same sweater. Stay tuned...

fig. 17. Casey applies for a job with Blue Man Group while Punch looks on. I mentioned near the end of Part One that Krista was most likely making the second Casey head for nefarious purposes...and I was right. Not satisfied with making a second Casey head from my sculpt, Krista has sculpted her own Punch and has now cloned FIVE of them in paper maché (only one of which is pictured above). She's currently working on multiple Judy heads (you can see the design in her sketchbook behind Punch). Kidding aside, these are just the base colours of the heads; they'll look different when they're done...although I still suspect nefarious intentions regarding Casey: Krista mentioned something about a Gollum puppet... ---------------------------------------------------- UPDATE, 12 December 2010: Krista finished her Dark Casey quite a while ago, but I've finally blogged about him here . Enjoy!

fig. 8. Sunburned Casey. I decided to use a dark colour for the base coat of acrylic paint (the same way I would use a dark colour for the underpainting of my oil paintings as a nice primer) even though this probably would be covered up entirely by successive layers of lighter Caucasian skin tones to match the original puppet. fig. 9. Head and hands with final skin paint colour. Here’s the final skin tone for Casey after several coats/attempts at matching the original puppet. It’s still not a perfect match, but it’s good enough for this project --successive gene splicing experimentation will eventually yield better replicants. fig. 10. Painted facial features and details. I used the opposite end of the brush to make the tiny dots of Casey’s freckles since I didn't have a fine-tipped brush at the time of painting. In fact there are some unfortunate smudges made by the not-so-fine brush I had to use for the fine detail work (my better bru...

This year, a friend of ours invited us to a Halloween party with a Can-con ( Canadian content ) theme and Krista almost immediately decided to (not dress up as, but) replicate the Finnegan puppet from CBC’s long-running and beloved kid’s show, Mr. Dressup as designed by puppeteer Judith Lawrence . I thought that was a great idea and, after seeing her make one excellent puppet after another, I knew she’d do a great job (and she did). I mentally entertained the notion of building the Casey puppet from the same show for about ten seconds before dismissing the idea on the grounds that I had never sculpted a puppet before and there didn’t seem to be enough time for me to fumble my way through something new. After a few days Krista suggested I make Casey. Since I still hadn’t thought of a good Can-con person or thing to go as, and trusting that she’d guide me through it (and make the costume!), I decided to go for it. What follows isn't so much a tutorial as it is a document of My Firs...