Maltazard - The Evil M

My latest commission - Maltazard / The Evil M - the villain from Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invisibles (Arthur and the Minimoys)~

The Gryphon and Alice (of Wonderland)

Thanks so much for allowing me to participate, ADO! I had a wonderful time creating them.
Oh! I also put together a slideshow of more photos of the pair. (and a few 'making of' images) Enjoy!

Ready for more adventures with Alice? <--- click me! (return to the ADO blog)

Sprites.

So I set about on Monday to make the first sprites... I so totally failed. I worked and worked and worked and WORKED and when I was done I had two nice looking heads with far too much detail. As I have said in the past - I find I have to balance the level of detail with that of my desire for fantastical abstraction - and I just didn't feel I could have crazy colored wild things with pointy toes and four fingernail-less fingers with much more human looking faces.... so I started again.... and I think the end results are not too bad - far closer to what I had in mind. Simple - cute- odd (of course) but that's what I do - eh?

I'd say I'm happy... can't wait to make more... I think I'll do and do just that! Brighter colors this time! Yarrr!

See you next week! :)

Sprites incoming...

Created three imps and a doll... all and all a good few days. I am so pleased with how these imps have turned out - I know I've said it before - but they are little limbed creatures endowed with so many of the features that I find so ascetically wonderful and endearing.

I love creating things I am pleased with. To sit back and look into their simple little faces and get to say: Hello.

I think it is something I've always wanted to do - and now I'm doing it. Creating things with worlds and stories all their own - maybe I always have - but there is something so wonderful to creating something with hands and weight. To be able to touch and sit with. I hope that doesn't sound mad. I don't think them real - but that they have a physical presence you can't deny me. In fact, I'd love to make enough creatures to sit surrounded but little pointy eared creatures- as though I'd crawled into one of my own sketches... and to some degree isn't that what I'm doing? I think I would create my army just for that. I wonder what others would see... coming up to a table decorated with sticks and branches and an army of strange little things.... I suppose it would greatly depend on the crowd. I am well aware that what I create can be considered a little bit strange - but lords on toast - why would I want to create what everyone else has made before me? Teddy bears? Bambi! NO. I shall have to continue under the ire and dismissal of so many - but I find more and more people who like what I do - who love it, even. For you I shall keep the glue heated and the wire cut.

Back next week with Sprites and wee monsters. I love -love- love the imps - but I think I've made enough for now. They're wonderful and great fun - but I think I need new faces.

Spring Cometh!

For the first time in well over... you know, I don't want to think how long it has been... I ran around outside with no shoes on my feet. Bliss! I'm sure I'm scaring the ladies who share this building with us... what with my spray painting the lawn three shades of not green... the literal cloud of faux fur that is now scattered across said lawn and now my wandering around outside with no shoes sculpting an imp. At least I'm harmless, right? Just wait until I start decoration the outside of this apartment! -At least I live in Vermont now... a place where no one seems to notice the slightly irregular or the outright odd.

And so life has gotten just a bit more sunny and pleasant. My imps are growing in number and I'm but a few chapters away from the last piece of my first finished story! I think - maybe a little - I'm starting to relax. I've been so worried for so long about how I could 'make this work' - but it's what I must do and so I will do it. I wouldn't be able attempt any of this without the help of my loving friends and family and will -not- fail you.

Granted - success is total whimsy and a world overrun with strangely cute things... but each to their own, eh?

love

-E

Of imps and sunshine and written things

I had wanted to set up an elaborate set up for my Etsy photos... but I think I like the sunshine more than I could ever care for a stark fully lit corner... that - and we simply don't have the space for setting up something properly... but I think I did justice to my work with these little images.

My sense of time is a wee bit off as I've been busy finishing up the first draft of my story!!!!!!!! <--- really. I'm allowed.

I've been working on this one in my head for ages... I know people say that sort of stuff. And I know now how they feel... I've hundreds and hundreds of pages of failed attempts to take on the story... I feel like it's one of my first attempts to paint in colors with oils... true monsters of paint and over worked failures.... I just get carried away and fail to make something worth looking at or, in this case, reading. I guess what I'm saying is - I had to learn how to edit. And I AM GOING TO FINISH~ Oh. So happy! It's nothing amazing - I assure you... the story itself... but the finishing. The having all these ideas and characters and places and things fall in words onto the paper - start to finish.... I am giddy... and often find myself writing when I meant to be doing something else.... like, updating my blog. <___< or my Etsy... on to which I just added a few new things - including this imp: E'oh.

Back to work I go!

Imp attack!

I fear I've not much to say at the moment... I'm tired, covered in fur, glue and spray paint... but oh so happy.

I've plans for another monster/creature - sort of eastern dragon like... of course, in my slightly cute/creepy style... 'cause I can't help myself.

Oh! And another plan/goal to add to my already (often unfinished) list of 'things to do in the day' I am adding a weekly plan to finish one truly finished/large portfolio image. 'cause... well, artists need those - right?

Right.

See you soon!

Oh! and I have a good sized lot of button/magnets finished as well... I'll get you some images of those next time.

work-work-work- lint roll! + Heros

Oh the fur! I am covered with it... the room is covered with it... Do they make room sized lint rollers? No matter, I have ye'ol broom and dust pan.
I'm happy with how they are turning out... each one is new, and I'm learning little things about the materials. Though I find myself, sadly, still trying to shake the world of the 'fine artist' that I was hardly ever really in... I've made only four of these little guys and a conversation with my favorite college teacher keeps tugging at the corners of my mind - he was worried that I would fall into the trap of only creating the flower pictures that I have, probably, only ever made half a dozen of... and at the time of the conversation - had only made two and just for my senior show. A show that, I hoped, would express my confusion about what made the shapes I found so pleasing 'corny' if they had eyes or 'art' if I turned them to the side and covered their faces...

I never have found answers... only the ones I've dug out of the muck of my own mind - And that is... these things are easy to like. Flowers, imps, trees, etc etc... they are easy to understand and to except. And so - they are not fine art.. heck, they are often hardly considered art.

But - and I have come to find this the most reassuring of things- all the artists whose works I've long loved - did not create works that fall into those fields of acceptance. I love Clive Barker's art work with a passion. He is shameless and he is ever ever EVER full of life and imagination and corny though it is - love. Love for creation and expression... and that comes in the form of strange and wonderful things that he -wants- people to want. He isn't holding you at bay with a stick demanding you pay him homage.

Brian Froud creates for a deity.. a force he believes calls to him - I don't have any such supernatural force to blame for my active choice to create things with pointy ears - I really really just like how they look. I do think I can blame him for it though. I blame him for a lot of my innate esthetics. Well.. I blame him and Jim Henson... and don't get me started on Jim Henson... I think his name... his work.. and his life speaks for itself. I was beyond lucky to have had a childhood so surrounded by his creative presence.

I'm proud to not fall into a world of creators that make solely for themselves.... I would be honored to, maybe, be placed in that category where all my heros meander: Imaginative fantasy (to use the Netflix genre name). Even if that means I inevitably find myself working at a bank... I'd rather have walked this path for a little while than to have lived the in the world of gallery shows and pretension. I once said - I'd rather be sweeping floors at The Creature Shop than working anywhere else... I still feel that way - geh.

Back to work! Where is that 'ol broom. ;)