Ecstacy of Paint

Let me tell you something,
believe me when I say this next one is going to be the shit.
Yes, I mean it, she is going to be awesome
'Ecstacy of St. Theresa', step aside, this orgasmic intimate woman is going to be getting sexual with paint, with COLOR.
Stay tuned, I hope to complete this by tonight.

Redesign (again!)

Oh the poor soul that is the butterfly person made outdoors on one fine Saturday afternoon.
I wont leave her alone... this happened before you know, this reincarnation thing. Its like a constant re-designing of a single piece until I feel it is finally "correct". This lady was a free-spirit that was wild and different. I made her because a fellow Union Square Artist, Lisa Park, and I were talking and I made a joke and positioned myself with my tongue out and said I was going to make a sculpture in the same pose which I did. Anyway, I later put metallic tattoo's on her and really don't like the way it came out not so much because of the tacky tattoo's but more because you cant see she is sticking out her tongue easily unless you look closely so what I plan on doing (within the next 48 hours) is...
Painting her black with a latex paint and sponging off the excess so that some of the metallic shows through yet she is black so you can easily see not only her form but also her facial expression, I do not want to loose the surface decoration completely, only partially, I want to add information, not subtract.
I also want to use those cute little polymer clay butterflies that I made a few blogs ago and glue them all over her, they are colored like her and I think that them flying around her and on her would be beautiful, no big wings for her, just a sea of little gems flying around.
And of course I will post pics when I get around to working on her.

Polymer Clay Butterfly Wings

Obviously nothing can replace nature in its beauty, however the time has come for me to move into a new direction and that breaks away from every one of my figures needing butterflies. Some will just be sculptures and that's it, while others such as the one above will incorporate hand-crafted butterfly wings.
So this is my first piece with polymer clay wings... actually I did do one a few years ago but lets just overlook her since I don't have pics of it. What I did was take clay run through the pasta machine and cut out the shapes I wanted. I then just painted and designed them to my liking, the more asymmetrical, the better I say! The final result is an evil earth fairy with metallic wings with hints of bluish-purple to bring the purple flowers into the composition together. I cant say that I love the wings, but then again even the real ones often didn't satisfy me, especially when all I had access to were black wings and real wings cannot be painted... well, they can but they end up looking like painted featheres, sticky and nasty. I think that once I start making them textured and in earth-tones I will be more happy with the results.

Artistic female nude miniature sculpture

This piece was made for Eileen Hedy Schultz, a graphic arts teacher at the School of Visual Arts here in New York City from her friend Marshall Hill who will donate the butterfly to be incorporated onto her back.

She is another full figured woman, much like the muse/golden angel that I made Here and also in the same pose, but she is much larger and her own individual. For those wondering, I do believe the female for is beautiful in its many forms from the thinner side to the more voluptuous figures. Many who know me personally and happen to have been in the pleasure of the women from the maternal part of my family know that these forms are a homage to them, big ladies who carried themselves with grace and dignity. I personally find curves to be very sensual.

Butterfly Blessing - Custom Order

Today I read a book entitled “Our Butterfly Blessings” (Personal journal of healing peace love and hope after suicide) written by Sharon Gorker Norris. Get it online This book was an interesting read and its not like I haven’t heard about peoples experiences with butterflies before after a love one was lost, yet this book was different because their son took his own life and in a way the book goes about in a non confrontational way to debunk the belief that those who take their own lives go to hell or some other dark place. I cant say I didn’t believe peoples butterfly stories, but I did often say things like, “lots of cemeteries are full of flowers and perhaps butterfly bushes,” but this past May my grandmother died and after taking some time alone outside by myself on the beautiful day, thinking how she would never see another such day, the skeptic in me was completely destroyed when a butterfly happily fluttered around me, I burst into tears in that instant.
This book was sent to me by Mrs. Norris’ nephew who wants me to design a butterfly person for her… what a feat after reading the book, I feel pressure. What if they don’t like it? Should I make it look like Ryan’s photograph? I'm not sure. I do know that today I will embark on the creative journey and see what comes out, I will not sketch it, but I do have a few ideas, one of them is that I want to create a child figure to show the innocence that was in him before he grew up, when he still loved butterflies and before his illness took hold of him. I want to have a great spangled fritillary butterfly inside since it was in his collection and the first butterfly to appear to the victims younger sister. The archetype of being at home with God or the heavenly father is recurring in the book and I would actually like to make a child sitting or sleeping in Gods hands, but that would be quite difficult to sculpt hands so huge. Enough talking, lets begin!

Polymer Clay Butterflies - Painted!

Its been a while since my last blog (a few hours :-p) so here is the continuation of the last one which featured my first ever polymer clay butterfly prototype. I made several more, all these were made without the use of a pasta machine and some were even created on the C-train in NYC, drawing unwanted attention from fellow mass transit takers, anyway just imagine the detail and beauty when I start making them using the pasta machine in various colored clays!
So anyway below are some pictures of my itty bitty cuties.
I baked them in the same batch with two couples which were butterfly people and MUCH thicker than the butterflies so they were over baked but did not burn. Polymer clay extrudes oil when burned so I'm glad they were just overdone a little.

Scroll down to read and see the process, click pics to make em big!

I began with the baked butterfly which had its wing veins/lines etched in before being baked as I knew I was going to stain them.


I "stained" the wings with black paint and used a paper towel to blot off the excess leaving the recesses darker than the upper parts of the wing which are to be colored.


Like so:


Next I applied color, I wanted red, green, yellow or orange, and multi



Here is a pic to show scale, as you can see, they are TINY


My next step after the paint dried was to make the butterflies iridescent or shiny so I used paint with soluble metals to do so... in the picture below the top two butterflies have the paint applied while the bottom three do not, applying the paint not only makes them shine but makes the paint more vivid, to further keep it vivid I may apply polymer clay glaze or sealant to the finished pieces.



And there you have it, finished product are just very beautiful little gems of polymer clay, the photographs do not even fully capture how they reflect any available light, they are like little precious stones or beautiful tropical fish. Stay tuned for my next endeavor of making a pair of larger wings for a butterfly person to wear, it should be fun!

Polymer Clay Butterfly

Everybody take note, something huge is about to happen! I just made a polymer clay butterfly, you know what that means? Yep, the pieces are about to go from 90% hand made to 100% handmade, well, they are one hundred percent handmade already, but you know what I mean, I cant say that I physically made the butterflies. I see a window opening up here, a window that allows me to stop having to obtain real butterflies and match the color to my figures, a window which allows people to buy my pieces without fear of offending anyone with a “dead bug”. Yep, I can see my next piece, little gold and blue butterflies flying around in the background, or a larger butterfly with gorgeous watercolor wings of pale pink, washed over with orange and accents of gold leaf on the edges… veins carved in and stained with brown paint. I know many people like the real butterflies so I will try and continue to provide to make everyone happy, but am going to be making my next few pieces with wings from my mind that are inspired by nature but made by me.

Here is my little tiny butterfly that I just made from clay, wouldn’t it be beautiful as a metallic creature with clear glaze on it so that it forever shined like an emerald?

why butterflies? because butterflies are symbolic, they signify everlasting life, renewal, change, freedom, death, beauty, re-birth, so many things and they have helped many a person get through a difficult time in life.

Porcelain flower sculpture? Nope, its polymer clay

This is the final product of the masterpiece in the last blog.
It is more about form than color obviously. I'm going to definitely make two figure couples soon... medium sized figures, one couple will be painted over white and the other solid black, more sculptural and see how they go. I may even paint white/black figures together holding each other, I haven't decided yet.





thus mellowed to that celestial light...

Polymer Clay flowers get serious?

I'm making a small bouquet of flat-colored polymer clay flowers which will later be spray painted white for an amazing contrast of stark white against the black-bottomed cube.
Usually the prominent part of polymer clay flowers are their bright colors. I use colored clay and after (and sometimes before) baking they are further painted to accentuate certain areas, but these are different, more sculptural and elegant.
Stay tuned for the final product.

Changel

Change + Angel = Changel
The first picture is the original piece which I felt rather depressed about, so kitsch, so out of proportion, so undefined. So, I decided that before I bake her, I should take her apart, re-sculpt her, meaning take her clothes off, give her some more realistic features including actual elbows, knees, the cartoonish hands must become individual fingers, and toes, larger breasts, and a more protruding belly, she is not pregnant. The final result is a sculpture although masculine, is a feminine realization reminiscent of “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin.

































































THE END