Old Time Variety Stars!

I recently drew some caricatures of old-time variety stars, plus Roy Hudd who I wouldn't want to think I was referring to as 'old-time' should he ever read this(!). Here they are:

I did the line work using an old-fashioned dip-pen and India ink, scanned it in and coloured it using Photoshop. It made a change from sculpting and was an enjoyable project.

Bust

At long last, over three years after starting and having scrapped one earlier attempt on the grounds it was shite, I have finally handed over a caricature bust I made of a friend's father. And this is it...

Sculpted in plasticine, RTV silicone mould (with plaster support jacket) made from that, then cast in a resin-bronze powder mix.

More Vince!

A rather longer interval between the last post and this than was originally intended, essentially because we had a brief heatwave for nearly two weeks which, due to my flat being like an oven in warm weather, made the clay too soft and sticky to work with. Fortunately, the nice weather has ended and June is its customary pisspoor self thus enabling me to resume sculpting and finish the Vince Cable model, as follows:

Now that I've completed two sculptures, I shall make plaster moulds from them soon, using a harder plaster than I've used before called Modell Plaster, which I got from Alec Tiranti (see links on the right). I chose to use this much harder material because the sculptures are considerably smaller than I've made before, so any potential small breakages of the plaster as the clay is removed will show up far more than on a larger casting of a larger object, such as the nearly-lifesize Nick Griffin head. I hope this very hard plaster will not break at all, either during removal of the clay master or subsequent removal of rubber castings.

Vince Cable

Formerly seen as a prophet crying in the wilderness for his warnings about casino capitalism and now tainted by membership of one of the shittiest government administrations in British history, Vince Cable is still reasonably respected. But not enough to escape being lampooned in clay. The sculpture isn't yet finished, but is nearly there, enough to warrant an in-progress photoshoot...

At last, a new post!

Blimey, it's been a while, but hopefully this will mark the start of a new burst of activity...

I'm working on a new project which involves making stopmotion animation puppets of members of the Coalition Cabinet. First up, everyone's favourite Child Catcher Lookalike Secretary of State for Education, little Michael Gove!

The sculpture is made from plasticine, and from that a plaster mould will be made and a latex skin will be cast, have a simple armature fitted and then be filled with polyurethane foam - in essence, it's like a miniature version of the Nick Griffin head but with an armature.

Here's the sculpt:

When the actual animation puppet is made, I'll post progress over on the McTodd Animates! blog.

Next up: Vince Cable!

B3tatastic!

B3ta (pronounced 'beta') is a marvellous website for wastrels (like me!) to post silly stories, anecdotes and craft daft photoshopped (and other) images and animations. My first foray as an adult into sculpting caricatures was actually for a b3ta competition, when I made my Patrick Moore bust (detailed in an early bolg post after I'd upgraded the eyes).

Recently, they had an Amazing Projects thread, to which I contributed a picture of Puppet Nick Griffin, and thereby got a mention in their newsletter! Not by name but by project: b3ta Newsletter 506

Which was nice!

And as a special treat, here's a bigger version of the b3ta image, with Puppet Nick looking suitably patriotic, the twat...


I'm also on the verge of completing a caricature bust of a friend's dad, from which I'll be making a mould and then a resin-bronze casting, to give the effect of a quality cast bronze piece. More on that later...

Biddley biddley bong!

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted. Partly this is due to some demoralisation on my part because the final Hitchcock sculpture/puppet turned out shite, a massive disappointment.

To cheer myself up, I dressed up Nick Griffin: