Birth Sign Bambi (2014)

Last Friday my niece gave birth to a lovely little girl named "Milou"

When she was about 7 moths pregnant she had asked me if I was able to make a birth sign for her to put in the yard when the baby was born (It's tradition here in The Netherlands to do such a thing when a child is born)

Final result of the sign. The name can be removed and hang in the room of the child.

I thought it was a great idea so she send me a picture of Bambi with his mother and a picture of the skunk with flowers. She asked if it was possible to use the flowers from the skunk picture and use them with the picture of Bambi and his mother.

Bambi and his mother

The skunk from Bambi with flowers.

Sure, no problem.
I've used Photoshop to create a new image.

The result of Photoshop

Now it was time to convert it to a wooded board.
I've used birch plywood. This is very light and it's nice and smooth on the surface. I took a piece that was 1,22 m width.

The board was first soaked with a wet cloth. Just enough to color the surface. This way the top fibers will soak up the water and swell, making it easier to smooth the surface later on with sanding.

When it's sanded it got 2 layers of white primer. This was sanded again and it was time to do some drawing.

The pencil drawing on the board.

When I was satisfied with the drawing I used a jig saw to cut out the whole piece.

Once the board was sawn it looked like this.

With things like plywood you will always end up with some torn edges. Most of them are shallow and disappear when sanded, others can be filled up with a small bit of filler.

Now it was time to paint.
I don't have a million cans of different tones of color. So most of them needed to be blended (?) by hand. I mostly used some prior tones like: yellow, blue, red, black and white. But for this project I also got bright pink  (white + red have a tendency to turn more of a salmon tone of pink + with blue it makes a perfect purple) and a mustard type of brown.

Most of the basic paint job done.

When all the colors had been done twice it was time to add the black linings. I used a special kind of brush for this; those small ones with long hairs used for nail art.

Added black linings.

  The sides were painted black too. I also painted the bolts that were needed to fix the board to the pole.

50 Year Sign (2014)

Someone from work had become 50. She hated it when we'd reminded her about it and took 2 weeks off, hoping we'd all forget about it.

Off course we didn't.

As a surprise I made her a sign of her in her reach truck with a package that said "50"

I also added a small bicycle light that was blinking like one of the scappers they use.

DSW statuette (2014)

As some may know, I once created a character named DSW. He's a half wolf/ werewolf, which means he's furry all the time.

Because most things I made of him are send to friends, I decided to make a little statuette for my own.

This statuette is made from air dried clay; no special, fancy, expensive clay as some thought, but just the cheap brand from the Action. (I'm not saying that's the best clay to use, but it worked)

DSW aka: Dark Shadow Wolf.
 Finished Statuette.

Normally, before sculpting anything I make a drawing of a nice pose. But DSW had a picture I've always used at the forum as my banner. So it made sense to use that pose as my base:

Old drawing made with Paint.

As you can already see I made some alterations to him: He lost his bandana and shirt and his scythe is turned the other way. I thought his torso was too detailed to put it to waste behind a shirt + I didn't really like the bandana for this statuette.

The scythe made more sense pointing the other way, as it is more ready to slash at your opponent.

Back to the process:
I made all his body parts separately.

Tip: Don't do that.

Later I learned that it is best to use a metal armature (Yes I started with this before the wedding sculpture I did some time ago).

The pros of not using it is that you have better access to put in more detail on the arms etc.

The cons, and it's a big con; it's very hard to put your sculpt together.
Not all glues will work on clay (I use wood glue) + a clay torso is relatively heavy, making it terrible to put it on his feet.

That aside:

Attempt to glue his body parts in place using all kinds of pins.

DSW's head.

Front side, finished.

Finished sculpting.

I kept his scythe separate from his body until the end, because it's easier to work with.

In the beginning I wanted to make a mold of it and make resin casts. I contacted with a mold making business for tips but the never replied back. I didn't want to ruin what I had so I decided to keep it with this single sculpt and paint it.

For a base I used a dark tone of brown. Make sure you get into all the crooks (which is quite a task when painting fur)

First layer of dark brown paint.

After that there aren't in between pictures.

His fur is finished with airbrushed light brown

For his pants I first painted it a dark tone of blue and finished it with a lighter tone of blue.
The scythe is painted black, then it received a metal color coating.
The skull is drowned into a grayish brown diluted paint soup and rubbed "clean". This leaves a nice "old" tone to it.

When I made the base I noticed it looked boring, so I created a little forest setting. Stones are made from torn pieces of dried clay, grass it made from painted rough paint brushes (pigs hair) and little twigs from rolled up clay.

The last coating is a varnish. I used the most mat type of varnish they had, because I don't want his fur and pants to be all shiny.

For his eyes, metal and teeth I did use a high glossy varnish.

As a finish I added his signature.

Finished piece

Left side.

Right side

Back side.

I know it might sound stupid, but even I'm amazed about how he turned out. I think he's pretty awesome.

Close up.

Flee Market Signs (2014)

Since a couple of years my aunt helps organizing a flee market that benefits the church.
They have some old road signs and my aunt thought it was a nice idea to get new ones and asked for my help to come up with ideas and make them.

We had some conversations about it and these 2 were our final ideas:

I knew it would take a lot of work to paint these on boards of about 1 meter, so I asked if she was able to help to color them. My aunt knew a lady who can do a good job at painting, so she took one of them to her.

First I drew them using pencil, than I traced my lines with a permanent marker. Later on, after the paintings were finished I redid the tracing and gave it a layer of varnish to protect it from the rain.

My drawing of some flee market things.

The finished sign, which the artist lady finished.

The other drawing.

My finished piece.
The colors aren't that clear due to the sun being on the wrong side of the sign.

Faux Bronze (2014)

One of the things I have learned at my Wood- Marble imitation classes is feax bronze. Which is a technique to turn an ordinary sculpture into a (fake) bronze one.

As a practice model I've used a cement statue of a lion holding a crest. (Which I use as a book stand.)

Finished sculpture

I started by applying a brown coating of acrylic paints. Acrylics are used because cement reacts on other types of paints.

Beginning stage:
I forgot to take a before picture in time.

Brown Sculpture.

After this coating, the sculpture is painted with a special Antique Bronze acrylic paint. This is a more gold tone of color than regular bronze, which is more orange/ copper colored.

When that has dried properly, the whole sculpture is coated with "stove polish". It's a black substance used to, as the word implies, polish stoves. Once this is rubbed on, rub it off again using a clean cloth. If you have a big sculpture, do this in steps; as you don't want to have it dried up and unable to rub it off anymore.

Now it looks already a bit older as the black residue remains in the deeper area's.

To finish it off we used some (gold) bronze powder to accent some highlights using a dry brushing technique.

Finished right side

Finished left side

 In the mean time I've already done some more statuettes, I'll put them here once I've got the pictures ready.

Riddick Spaceship Node Backpack (2014)

For this years Elf Fantasy Fair I wanted to dress like Dahl from the movie Riddick. She was 2nd in command of the help troops.

With such an outfit you always need a suiting backpack to store your stuff. I decided to make the Spaceship Node (Battery) that were stolen in the movie and taken on their backs near the end of the movie when they retrieved them.

Movie Node

My Replica Node

I started with a 3D drawing, which I converted to a 2D AutoCAD drawing. With this drawing I was able to make templates used to saw out.
There were quite the number of pieces, because I had to work with a lot of different depths and rounded curves.

The many pieces; top, front, bottom, sides.

How it looks when everything is glued into place

Node after sanding.

The original node is glowing a bit. I wasn't able to work with perspex and lights, therefor I choose to paint it white and the borders would be turned grey to give it a bit of an illusion of light.

After the glueing I had a lot of work sanding everything to get a smooth surface. I used filler to fill up small gaps and differences. This again was sanded.

The Node after the first layer of primer

2 different colors of primer are used. I used white primer for the white parts and grey for everything that wouldn't become white.

I used a water based paint to finish it; this dries easier, therefor it's possible to do 2 layers of paint on a day off.
This round I've done several coats and a full layer of filler to achieve the flat surface I wanted.

1 of many coats of paint.

The backpack also needed a lid. I was lucky enough there was an oval shape on the top. I used this shape to make a lid:

Lid

On the lid were some glowing "Buttons". I used furniture decoration nails which I painted white. I cut off the nail part and glued them in drilled holes in the lid.

To keep the lid in place I used small 3mm magnets. There were also glued in drilled holes.

Finished Node; front side

Finished Node; Perspective view

Top view without lid.

Top view with lid.

 I've made some shoulder pads. These held a small harness at which the Node could be placed.

Wedding Statuette (2014)

A good friend of mine was getting married and I wanted to make them something personal.
I thought it would be nice to make them a little wedding statuette of them in caricature.

Finished piece with a lighter to show the actual size.

First off I made a quick sketch:

This is a terrible draft; I messed up her face.

Nothing special about that, more a draft to tell me things I should pay attention at and how their position would look like. Also I did a small study about wedding clothes and hair. They didn't give me any tips to use, so I just had to choose something.

I started with their heads. I figured that if I wasn't able to do their faces I wouldn't need to continue on their bodies.

The "rough" version. Lateron I remove/ add more clay to finish details that aren't right yet.

The most tedious job is haircuts. Her boyfriend has a bit curly hair without bold spot. Therefor I had to put hair by hair on his head. These are small rolled up pieces of clay, folded once, slightly curled up and pushed into place.

Almost halfway with his hair.

Since the faces turned out alright I started with their bodies.
For that I made a wire frame. I've worked before on things without a frame, but that didn't always work. It was recommended to use some sort of frame.

The wireframe; 1 piece for their legs, 1 piece for their body + arms. These are hot glued together.

I kept 2 separate figures because that's easier to work with and paint.

Later I glued their heads in place and added hands.

The groom. His right hand is missing.
It will be glued in place after he's painted.

The bride; her left hand is missing.
I can't fit them together when their hands are already on.

Now it was time to paint. I used pictures all the time to get their natural color about right and to add things like birth marks.

Groom in color

Bride in color

Back view

Front view.

I added a layer of varnish a nice plateau and put them in a bell jar, which actually fitted perfectly and added their names + wedding date.

Finished piece.

And if you're curious if it looked anything like the wedding couple when it comes to clothes/ hair:

Not really!

She had a dress with small sleeves; he wore a dark grey suit with a green tie. Her hair was a-symmetric.

But the most important thing was that they enjoyed their gift and it does look like them.