Gruber ~ Demon in a waistcoat

I had promised to have this finished by April 2009, so obviously I’m delighted to have finished it before it goes a full year past my own self-imposed ‘due date’!

Like most of his erstwhile and largely forgotten friends Gruber is keen on world domination, although it’s perhaps telling that he and his cohorts are largely forgotten given their compete ineptitude when it comes to matters of actually achieving world domination.  Indeed his most well known cousin, Gravalash, was defeated by his inability to get off a high shelf and whilst such trifling difficulties are unlikely to be of much difficulty to this fellow the complexities of reaching the door handle have limited the range of Gruber and the fulfilment of his innocuous plans.

He dreams of breaking loose and running free as he once did, although he is still haunted by the nightmare of attempting to cross a field of snow that proved to be too cold for his tippy-toes, alas what else is left for him other than to stand at the window and wave at the post lady …

Gruber stands at 18.5″ / 47cm tall, is 16.25″ / 41cm from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other, and is approx 11″ / 28cm deep.

He is available for sale, to a good (and secure) home in our Coriandr shop, here – additional images are also there.

Kezeff ~ featured artist

I’ve really been taken by the work of Kezeff, another artist I found on DeviantArt.  I’ve only been following them for a short period, but even in that time I have been fairly impressed not only by the quality of their work but by the creativity behind it and the seemingly highly effective execution of that creativity.  Kezeff uses super-sculpey in creating their sculptures, a hugely popular material (and something I’ve been itching to try myself) and I believe paints them up with acrylics for the most part. You can find more of their work here.

Face Parts Study

Aspiring artists and sculptors would do well to take a leaf out of Kezeff’s book and do some studies of whatever their preferred subject matter is. I’m sure it’s something that I would benefit from, even where your intention is to twist it in some fashion understanding the basic anatomy of your subject can be hugely beneficial.

Much of Kezeff’s work appears to consist of busts either in a more realistic fashion as with this piece here:

Battle Chasers Knolan Bust

Or something a bit more corrupted like this fellow:

Zed

Kezeff has also worked to create some the more quirky pieces such as these wee characters here:

Snoogle

Pumpkin Carl

I really enjoy viewing the sculptures that Kezeff creates, but what keeps me coming back for more (aside from the cool subject matter) is the attention to detail that he puts into the sculptures. Look back over the images above and notice the wrinkles and creases in the skin, the underlying bone structure, the attention to making moist elements appear moist and the variation in skin tone and texture. It’s each of these elements that add up to make some rather great sculptures and I can’t recommend enough that you take a look at their DeviantArt account to see more of their work.

With luck I’ll have one of my own sculptures to share with you soon, I can’t promise it’ll be as refined as these but it will be in my own particular (shouldn’t that be peculiar?! – ed.) style!!

Papier mache wall art

It’s been commented on in the past that there are strange things going on in the dark recesses of my mind, that they seem to bleed out into the light through what I create … I think ‘they’ may have a point.

I seem to have a raft of canvasses lying around and despite repeated attempts to paint something of any worth on them I seem to fail and fail again.  The canvas here has been used so many times now that I can’t recall how many images lie beneath this final effort, perhaps it’s a furious amalgam of all that went before, a seething anger at the ineptitude slapped on the canvas below.

Whatever it is, using a canvas as a base for some wall art/sculpture is an avenue of interest to me and something I feel sure I will pursue further at some future point.  In the meantime I can think of at least two (more conventional) sculptures that deserve to be finished after well over a years worth of idling!

Wall art W.I.P.

It’s always a bit of struggle for me to get back into the swing of the craft thing following the festive frivolities, of course it hasn’t helped that we were on emergency fuel rations until our delivery arrived Wednesday and I had to spend the next three days shifting it up the hill to the house … that’s another story though!

Currently I’m working on this piece of wall art that I last picked up during late November or December and following the break I’ve lacked any kind of motivation to pick it up again.  Losing momentum can be a real struggle at times and until you can gather yourself to move on projects can idle and die, this can be a real issue with materials like papier mache which require long drying periods in between adding layers or building up texture or depth.

The concept isn’t exactly a new one but it’s one I’ve been keen to experiment with and following my fourth sub-standard painting on this canvas I decided it was time to use it for something other than painting … I suppose you might suggest that the previous efforts have been consumed by the character emerging from the canvas now.  He certainly looks like he might have a touch of indigestion!

Sock creatures, a monstrous diversion!

Sewing is really Jolene’s thing, obviously I’m far more interested in manly arts and crafts rather than these silly women’s past-times!  Obviously I jest, but sewing isn’t really what I do … other than from a utilitarian stand-point it’s not a craft I’ve ever felt the need to refine, alas, with time to kill and the workshop outside getting colder and colder as winter sets in I was persuaded to have a go at making a sock creature or two.

This is my first effort, and whilst I don’t think it’s a complete failure …

… I can’t help thinking that she looks like a bit of an old slapper!

We’ll be selling Jolene’s ones at our forth-coming craft fayres, we’ll announce dates shortly.

Dressing the Guy

Better late than never.

I finally managed to get the guy dressed and delivered to the shop on Tuesday, a bit later than I had hoped, although this was largely as a result of not being able to find any suitable clothing for the chap … the hat, for example, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind!

Anyway, just like his creator, it turns out that Guy is partial to a nice cuppa tea out in the garden.

This rather peculiar, and lumpy, fellow can now be seen in the local shop where he scares the bejeezus out of the ladies that work there, particularly now that the nights are getting longer and darker.  I can assure you that it’s creepy as hell when you forget he’s there and just catch this large man-sized shape out of the corner of your eye … I’m just glad he’s niot in the house anymore!

more hand carved plant pokery plant pot decoration fun

I’ve developed a real joy out of making these little characters, generally I’ll closet myself away in the workshop, put on some Razorlight and get into a general carving frenzy.

This batch were made using some of the last remains of the silver fir and elm, although I do have some european larch, Birch and Ash waiting in the wings for when the mood next takes me.

Here are a few group photos for your pleasure:

As much as I’d love to upload these to the shop we’re continuing to stock up for a glut of craft fayre’s in the run up to Christmas, our main event will be in Dundee with a couple of smaller events more locally.  Details will follow in due course anyway.

more papier mache guy – work in progress

I had hoped that the guy would have been dressed/assembled today, sadly though a complete failure for any clothes to materialise have meant that this hasn’t happened.

I have however, completed my part of the group project though and spent a few hours last night (on top of the many hours construction time) finishing off the treacherous painting stage.  He’s looking a bit pink now, although at one point he looked a lot more like salmon mousse than I had planned!  Of course, such things are painted up in series of layers … something I’m prone to forgetting during the initial burst of enthusiasm required for me to get started … he’s also got a squint!?

So, it looks like I’ll be taking a trip to a charity shop tomorrow to see if I can get some appropriate clothes for this chap.  I’d hoped to get hold of a John Lewis catalogue, but I think a prominent receipt sticking out of his pocket with the words, “MP’S Expenses” will need to suffice for my wee political dig this year … last year he was a banker!

Papier mache guy – work in progress

This seems to be becoming an annual event for me, doing the guy’s head for the local playgroup that sees the fellow deposited in the local shop where he’s required to raise funds for the little kiddie-winkles activities, not that it bothers me at  all.  On the contrary it’s a good re-introduction to using paper pulp in sculpture following the summer when I’m more inclined to sit out with a lump of wood and a set of knives … not something I’m so inclined to do during the autumn and winter months when the notion of straying far from the stove fills my heart with dread!

Probably my biggest fear in doing the guy is finishing it, a poor paint job can make even the best sculpture look like some pre-school effort … and this is far from being ’the best sculpture’ making the paint job all the more important!  So in the interests of preserving it in some fashion prior to painting I like to get a few work in progress pictures for posterity’s sake.

I’ll do a further post once he’s finished off in all his glory, and maybe get a couple of pics of him in-situ in the shop, before the final incineration on bonfire night

Larry “two faces” Larch – Wood Carving

Ah yes, finally!  This has, without doubt, been the single most time consuming carving I’ve done, normally I keep track of the time taken in order to assign some sort of meaningful price to the object, however, as the hours ticked by and began to appraoch 20 hours of blister inducing carving I decided to ‘forget’ to record anymore hours?!

It did however give me a  good chance to get to know this particular character:

Larry is something of an unpredictable fellow prone to contradictory outbursts espousing first one position in an argument before immediately taking up the other, of course this may have something to do with the argumentative mouth-piece that resides on the back of his head.

Some have suggested that Larry has become unstable over the years, no doubt as a result of continually having to justify himself to, well, himself. Inevitably his ’sap’ pressure has risen to levels where his health really has been compromised, indeed, you can see it in his bulging eye!

It maybe won’t come as a particularly huge surprise that Larry is indeed, a piece of Larch wood, taken from an over-sized beast of a tree that had taken over my sisters garden and requires a certain amount of ‘pruning’.  It’s an incredibly pale wood, almost pastel white, with a grain that’s almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wood.  It creates a very subtle contour which is best seen in, well, in real life!

The finish here is acrylic paint with a coating of a couple of hard wearing varnishes.

I now have a shed full of this wood, much will be burnt in the stove although I’ve already picked out a couple of prime pieces for carving, not least of all a trunk section with two partially intertwined branches rising out of it … branches doesn’t really describe them though, maybe slightly smaller trunks.  It’s about 3 or 4 feet tall and screaming out to be carved.

I may need largely gouges though!

Available to buy from the shop