blue monster and the little red ghost :

__________________________________

Happy Halloween!

dedicated to Christopher Koelle, and the scariest face in the world.

Thistledown puppet : stage 4

And now the completed head!

Philip from Thistledown Puppets has really knocked this out of the park, I mean it's just looking amazing. In his own words Philip explains the covering,

"I chose a crushed panne fabric for the skin because it’s thin, stretchy, and with the slight sheen it reminded me of dragon scales."

I love the hair on it; the little beard, especially. I'm just very pleased to see this project come together, literally piece by piece.

I'm a little envious of someone who can make puppets. I love sculpture and good puppetry seems to me like living sculpture.

To read more about this joint effort with me and Philip over at Thistledown Puppets, click here for a compilation of my posts explaining the project and to see the original painting which inspired the puppet.

Surprise off schedule post.

Do you remember this piece I made for Terrible Yellow Eyes?


A couple months ago I was contacted by TYE fan (and talented quilt-tress) Heather Stahnke. She asked if she could turn my piece into a quilt.


Turned out pretty great! Thanks Heather!

and more character development

Here's another peek at the character development for the massive project alluded to in this post.


I just like the way this fella turned out.

Thistledown puppet : stage 3

Another dragon puppet update --We've got the completed body! Looking so, so awesome Philip!

To read more about this joint effort with me and Philip over at Thistledown Puppets, click here for a compilation of my posts explaining the project and to see the original painting which inspired the puppet.

Thistledown puppet : stage 2

And now! We've got the body. Looking awesome, Philip!



I've loved puppets ever since, I mean who doesn't love Jim Henson's creations? I'm thrilled to see this creature come together bit by bit. Many thanks for Philip from Thistledown Puppets, again, for a wonderful project.

Can't wait to see it complete!

To read more about this joint effort with me and Philip over at Thistledown Puppets, click here for a compilation of my posts explaining the project and to see the original painting which inspired the puppet.

character development

There's not much else going on right now, on the personal project front (Alice) at least. For the next several weeks I'm swamped with one massive project and a couple smaller ones.

For fun, here's one figure from several pages of character concept art that I've been working on for the massive project.


I look forward to being able to talk about the job here.

my dream last night

My dreams are typically rather mundane and I don't usually remember them.

Last night was an exception. With every care to capture the exact nuance, I have transcribed it here for your enjoyment.


Thank you.

update/Alice

Man, work had been crazy as of late. I've been doing close to 15 hour days the last week or so. It's an incredible project and one that I look forward to being able to talk about here. I've not enjoyed a client project like this since Le Cadeau du Temps.

I am sorry for missing my scheduled posts last Friday and Monday, though. I'm terrible.

Here's a little update with where I am with the Alice work :

I've got through chapter 9 thumbnailed and roughed. All that's left is the last 3 chapters. Once I get those put together I'll start posting the progress. It's been fun, I hope you will like the result.

I especially like the Cheshire cat, I modeled him after my one cat, James who is fat.

Thistledown puppet : stage 1

Philip Hatter over at Thistledown Puppets sent me the first few pictures of the puppet I designed. Awesome!


Looking mighty fine! I'm very excited to see this come together.

Check out this link to the first post about the project for more info and to see the original painting.

Many thanks again to Philip for a great idea!

Alice in Wonderland

Over the month of October (and likely in to November) in whatever free time I can gather, I'm going to be working through the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice in Wonderland.

12 chapter illustrations + prologue and epilogue illustrations.


I'm looking forward to it -- every project I work through I enjoy in a different way. With Walters I enjoyed the challenge of working in a graphic novel format but I found I missed putting everything into individual pieces rather than spreading the effort over panels and pages. Grimm and Other Folk Tales fulfilled that. And while never hectic, Grimm certainly was solid work, no breaks so next I wanted a slow burning project, one that would take it's time and grow. The result was Terrible Yellow Eyes. And now with Alice, I'm excited to be making individual pieces again. (And of course, after Alice it's on to Flight 7.)

In a way, I'm looking at this little Alice project as preliminary work. I'm going to be making 11" x 14" drawings, finished, complete drawings like this troll one. I hope to find the time in the spring to turn these drawings into large oil paintings. That's the idea, we'll see about it.

Of course, I'll be posting the development and progress over the coming weeks.