Car Docs

I was commissioned to do some caricature work for a car repair shop.  This piece, done in brush and ink, is on all their advertisements.  Last year, they had a giant billboard made from this artwork which features two of their mechanics as the the car doctors.  I want to go over there and take a picture of it, but I can't seem to find the time.

Car Docs, February 2004

Michael Jackson

I call this a digital paper sculpture.  Skin and clothes patterns were accomplished in Photoshop and printed for the actual paper sculpture.  As work progressed on the digital patterns, I was also manipulating and layering the pieces to form a digital version of my paper sculpture of Michael.  This looks just like the paper sculpture, only slightly cleaner.

Michael Jackson caricature, January 2002

Panda Explosion!

I have another site where I am able to promote more of my artwork.  It is called deviantART and my space there can be found at fauxhead.deviantart.com.  There is a daily gallery on the site called the Daily Deviation.  For 24 hours, a small group of artwork is suggested and selected to appear on the home page.  One cannot try to submit their own artwork and there are millions and millions of artwork on the site.

Well, I lucked out and my Faux Wood Panda II made the front page and became an overnight sensation.  In one day, over 8000 people saw my panda.  My watchers went from 6 to 71.  And over 1500 art lovers selected my panda as one of their favorites.  I answered comment after comment and just watched as the number of visitors to my gallery grew and grew.

Here, for a curtain call, is my semi-famous panda!

Little Pelicans

After making a large pelican pendant (found elsewhere on this blog), I wanted to try one or two in a smaller size.  Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't, as evidenced by the two pelicans shown here.  The first one, a tiny steampunk pin, looks pretty good.  The second one, another pin, just doesn't work.  I do like the faux woodgrain on the beak, though. 

Kritter Kids "Pink Elephant"

All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Look it up, it’s a fact.
Sunday is comic strip day here at the ol’ Fauxhead blog.  So, we are rounding out Frog Week with a Kritter Kids comic strip featuring a toad, which, as we have learned, is also a frog.
This is a true Sunday comic strip in the larger Sunday format. Enjoy.

Kritter Kids "Pink Elephant", January 1991

Pacman Frog

Originally, this was going to be just “Pacman Frog”. I knew it was missing something, when one of my coworkers suggested adding a fly. That made all the difference. Now it is “Pacman Frog & Green Bottlefly”. I actually like the fly better than the frog.
Ornate Horned Frogs, or “Pacman Frogs”, are so named due to their huge mouths and voracious appetites. Their mouths are as wide as their bodies. There are many different color variations, ranging from bright green, to red, to albino. The females grow larger than the males and can reach 6 inches in length!

Pacman Frog & Green Bottlefly, May 2008




Here are some examples of the real deals.

100 Poison Frogs

The poison frogs posted here the last four days all started from a sketch and then a very clean drawing. Here are 100 poison frog drawings, just waiting for color and environment to bring them to life!

Build-A-Frog Workshop

I'm asked over and over, "How did you do that?"  Here is a pictorial breakdown of the steps involved in making my Big-Eyed Tree Frog paper sculpture.

The base is first.  This one is just called "mud".  If you look closely, graduations of brown color is evident.  This was glued and pressed on to illustration board.

Real leaves were collected and scanned into my computer.  A watercolor effect was applied to the leaves.  They were printed on archival paper with a professional printer and cut out.  Brown inks were applied to the edges of each leaf so they would not look like paper.

The paper leaves were strategically glued to the "mud" base.

On to the frog.  I start with a rough sketch on very thin paper.  I keep refining the sketch until I can make one with very clean lines.  Clean lines are important to me because it will eventually be cut out with the sharp point of an X-Acto knife. 

Here is the sketch with skin patterns added.

The sketch is separated into the pieces that will be cut out in order to make the paper sculpture frog.  This sheet is resized with about 5 to 7 copies printed.

Here are the colors created in Photoshop.  This sheet is printed on archival paper and printed on a professional printer.  The sketches from the previous step are used to accurately cut out each piece.  Colored inks are used to match the colors and color the edges so the frog pieces don't look like paper.

Here is the finished piece.  The pieces of the paper sculpture Big-Eyed Tree Frog is glued together using Sobo glue.  This glue is perfect because it is thick (paper doesn't buckle), clear and rubbery.  The head of the frog is propped up on a little archival foam core to give it an even more 3D appearance. 

Black Lace Frog

In case you missed it, poison frog number 1 was posted on April 7^th, before Frog Week started. It was the “Darkland Blue” morph of a strawberry poison frog. Check it out.
Here is poison frog number 4, Oophaga Sylvatica “Black Lace”. It is perched on a trilobite fossil, all paper, of course.

O. Sylvatica :Black Lace", July 2009

Frog Jewels

Continuing Frog Week, here is poison frog number 3, Ranitomeya Uakarii. I think these are my favorite poison frogs. The colors are just amazing! They truly are jewels of the rainforest.
Poison frogs are very small, so my paper sculptures of them are small. All my poison frog paper sculptures fit in a clear baseball card box, 3 ½ x 2 ½ x ¾ inches deep. The lattice work on this piece took almost 8 hours to cut out the holes. With all this intricate work, I should have been a surgeon. I know it pays a lot better.

Ranitomeya Uakarii, June 2009 

Frog Week 2011

Every July or August, the Discovery Channel airs a week-long series dedicated to sharks, appropriately named “Shark Week”. In the spirit of Shark Week, welcome to a week of art dedicated to frogs. Welcome to Frog Week!
In my quest to make 100 poison frog paper sculptures, here is frog number 2, Dendrobates Auratus “Campana”. The perch and reflections of this frog are accomplished using digital garden globes.

D. Auratus "Campana", June 2009.

Kritter Kids "Falling Rocks"

Kritter Kids "Falling Rocks", September 1990

Be sure to tune in here tomorrow for the start of Frog Week!

Kool Kat

This project illustrates some of my improvements working with polymer clay.  The lesson here is how to get a nice effect with extruded clay.  For those unfamiliar, extruded clay are disks of different colored clay pushed out of a clay gun.  The disks of clay are stacked in whatever order suits you and inserted into the gun, which has a metal disk at the end where the clay gets comes out and a plunger on the other end to do the pushing.  There are many metal disks with different shaped holes in them.  It's like those playdoh gadgets where the playdoh gets pushed through different shaped templates.
The entire process can be found here http://polymerclaydaily.com/dreammachine.html

This is my first attempt with extruded clay.  Lots of distortion with my squares and the colors I picked are drab with little contrast.

Ah, much better.  This Kool Kat is ready for Halloween!  I know it's only April, but it will be here before you know it.

Stand Out from the Crowd

Many of us are making the switch to HD and wide screen.  Here is my piranha paper sculpture, Stand Out from the Crowd, in glorious widescreen 1920x1080.

Stand Out from the Crowd, September 2005

P.S.  I love my new iMac! 

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin was most famous as a silent film actor.  He was born in London in 1889 and died in 1977 at the age of 88.  His character, The Tramp, was the subject of several films and is the character he is most associated.

Charlie Chaplin in the Spotlight, September 2004

Here is my Charlie Chaplin paper sculpture caricature.  The brick wall is a photo from a 200 year old church.  The steps were photographed at Longwood Gardens.  The paper sculpture of Chaplin was photographed and the whole business put together in photoshop.

The real Charlie Chaplin without makeup.

Chaplin as The Tramp.

With Jackie Coogan in The Kid, 1921

The Kid, 1921.  Jackie Coogan went on to play Uncle Festor in The Addams Family.

Modern Times, 1936.  Click on this pic for a Wallpaper 1024x768

This is my first paper sculpture of Chaplin, July 2000.  Every single brick and brick fragment was cut out individually.  Definite room for improvement here.

I have a huge file of this, but it is full of dust and scratches.  One of these days, I will give it the "once over" in photoshop, and post it for all to see and download.

Kritter Kids "Tikki"

I chose this strip because of the start of the 2011 baseball season.  Play Ball!

Kritter Kids "Healthy", October 1990

Tikki on Mount Gibbs, Sierra Nevada, California