Monday, November 28, 2016

Winter is Coming...


Welcome back readers! This is a short blog so it will be a quick read. Without further ado, please let me introduce you to your new friend and mine....
This piece started with a quick sketch. The idea was not really new - I found a vintage holiday decoration of this type at the thrift store and other artists continue to make pumpkin snowmen, but I thought it would be a good segway piece from Halloween to Christmas.  


Below you can see that I began very simply with a wood base and armature wire.


Next I slid a block of Styrofoam onto the armature. I would use this block as the inner core for the body of the figure.


I used a razor blade and chopped the block into the basic form. Even at this early stage you could see where it was heading.


With that done, I gobbed some Bondo onto the form with plans to sand it down.


After I sanded the bondo, I used Magic Sculpt epoxy dough to sculpt the base form of the pumpkin head.


I then continued the same process for the torso pumpkin. Below you can see it midway through the process.


Oops! Almost forgot I was going to add some arms to this fellow. I jammed an armature wire all the way through the body.


After that I moved onto the lowest pumpkin and when ahead and added arms. I also added some black paint into the eyes and mouth just to keep the project moving forward. Even at this stage you can imagine this guy tipping his hat can't you...?


Nevermind. Save your imagination and just look at the photo below - hand and fingers now added.


I continued adding Magic Sculpt onto the hands and began to give my pal a stem.


When the sculpting was completed I based out the figure with acrylic paint. There would be a lot of refining to do, but this gave me an idea of what the final piece would resemble.


Below, a blurry vision filter brought to you by No Sleep.


At this stage I put the finishing touches on his hat and started adding vines.


While still refining the paint job, I added some paper leaves to the vines and a crow to perch on his arm. If you look close you can see a toothpick propping up his hat while the glue between his fingers dried. The last finish touch was the tattered scarf around his neck to complete the snowman theme.


And now for the proper lighting and correct color...






"Top of the Morning to Ya!"


My little friend will make a wonderful mantel piece! Below you can see another piece I made called, "The Witching Tree". You can read about how that piece was made by clicking here.


"The Guardian" is available at my Etsy shop Click Here!
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You can also search through my previous blogs to see how some of my other artpieces were built by simply typing in the name or subject in the search box located at the upper left corner of this blog page.

Thanks again for reading and for your interest in my work!
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-z

The Last Tidbit:

Check out my friend's JRS-Art and illustrations on Deviant Art!