Jims face

I decided to paint Jim's face white in order to repaint it, as the first attempt wasn't quite right, he looks pretty terrifying like this now though.

thats' better........

hanging out with the daffs and daydreaming, he's finally looking like a 'real boy' now

just some examples of my degree show work, i made a series of mums inspired by Judy Budnitz's story 'Nice Big American Baby" this is how the finished three turned out, quite the little family....

 

this one (above) was actually stolen from my garden! she is basically life sized and has masses of woolen hair! I still need to put up missing posters on all the tree's around hyde park in leeds to try and find her, so if anybody has any leads or clues please let me know!

mini me's

putting together a few mini versions to have a go with varied processes of filling, considering the possibility of using expanding foam as a filler rather than foam or wadding as this will fill up every crevice and potentially best re-create the original figures...........plus i love experimenting 'cus you always find something you never expected!

so this is the first body all pieced together, i still needs to sort out the stuffing and the wire frame but just arranged this to get a bit of an idea. The joining process has been a mixture of stitching the latex skins together and also applying extra layers of liquid latex to merge the seams, i suppose i could have just used the latter alone but i want that element of visible seams literally stitched together like a rag doll or a puppet to be apparent and not concealed. 

she literally balooned

i love this view of the construction, somehow this part is often more beautiful than the finished piece...

the next body is to be a bit of a patchworky mixture of tights which are stitched together around the structures of the body parts and then coated in layers of latex in order to fix the shape. I then peel away the resultant skin in order to reconstruct the body as a kind of stuffed doll with a  stiff wire frame which can be shaped and manipulated.

so as you can see each body bit is constructed separately in order to then be pieced together afterwards. it's kind of a long way around but  it's also the only possible one as it's not an option to construct the whole body in one go as materials wont allow, also as every cloud is supposedly lined with silver there are numerous benefits to this process, as i would have to make so many individual cuts to remove the skin from the whole body that i may as well just do it this way.

piecing bits together

so this is the process used to make the first body, never having enough clay around to be able to sculpt the whole thing in order to cast from means it has to be done piece by pice and then joined up afterwards, this initial one acts as a kind of dress pattern from which i can work out a system to make the next.

the legs have been borrowed from a more than willing mannequin donor, however she was far too skinny for my tastes so i've had to meat her up a bit, especially around the bum/hip zone, if this is to be the mighty amazonian woman warrior i picture then there has to be some god damn power behind those thighs!

the miraculous bust. its been a bit of a struggle getting the right shape for these, again without having enough clay to spare, what i ended up doing was filling giant balloons with plaster and waiting until it was just 'going-off' and then forming with my hands the desired shape. it took quite a few goes, then i had to try and make a matching pair, but i got there in the end.