Prohibition skull: 'What drives you?'

I recently finished another skull and this time back at decorating real skulls. I got a ewe skull, probably Swaledale breed, and wanted to create something around the theme of individuality and law.

I have often gone about the difficulty in being different, behaving different and thinking different among big groups of people. Generally, big groups want you to act in the same way as the rest of the group. Unless, you gain status. We have things to make sure people behave in a predictable and desirable way, one of those things is the law.
The law can prevent an individual of doing what it wants to do and can go against their individual development or even potential. In this case I used the style and them of the American prohibition era as a symbol for this individualism and law. Off course I could have chosen something different, but as my main goal is to create something cool and visual pleasing, I choose this era that has those cool gangster elements.

As it was around the Day of the Dead, I used a paint style, although not too obvious, Mexicans often use for celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead or Dias de los Muertos.
To make it all visual more cool, I reshaped the front of the skull a bit into the front of a car around that time and because in the 50's the started to use cars from that era to create Hot Rods, I decided to paint flames on it. OK, in this case one could argue I used the symbol of a Hot Rod to further emphasise the individualism, but no, this is a coincidence.
One of the cooler elements of that time is that gangster would often 'hang' on the side of the car with their Tommy guns ready for action, or to escape quickly. I wanted to create the same effect by letting this skeleton gangster hang out of the eye socket with his Tommy gun. The skeleton referring to the Day of the Dead.

So the title is: 'What drives you'? Mainly referring to the car and the individualism of the viewer and asking them the question, but also for them wondering what is holding them back.

So here it is:

Autumn and Winter art

I think I subconsciously getting into a winter mode. I recently wanted to make some new decorated skulls, partly in time to show around The Day of the Dead celebrations, but I think also because it feels like the right time of the year to work with 'death'. So I already finished 3 skulls and I am working on another real sheep skull with horns, probably a Swaledale breed ewe.

But I am also tempted to do some street work as well. For me that fits with the time of the year because I like grim corners for it. Either nature taking over urban objects, which is often in abandoned places or grim corners in general. But Christmas will be taking a lot of my time till January, so I think the effect of this mode of thinking will be next year. It gives me time to think about what to do. I have already got some ideas and will try to make them simple so I that I am able to show them before the new year. Fingers crossed!

Day of the Dead - Dia de los Muertos

It is that time of the year again where the days are getting darker, wetter and colder and we are getting near Halloween AND the Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos. If you know my art, you can imagine that those days have a strong connection with my work, but not just because I decorated real animal skulls or use bones. I have a stronger connection with Dia de los Muertos than Halloween, because I love the vibrant colours and the general style of the celebrations.

I have been wanting to make one or two skulls in this style again for a year. I made two skulls inspired by the traditional Sugar Skulls, but wanted to make some again this year. You may have come across some the vibrant colours and detailed drawings on this blog or my Facebook fanpage:

So I have been used those drawings (left) on a real Fallow Deer skull (right), but I wanted to have a base that looked more like a human skull to get closer to the Sugar Skull feeling and decided to make one of my own. I didn't want to make a realistic human skull, because those are everywhere and I could just have bought a skull replica from Ebay. No, I wanted the skull to be different, manlike and in an urban cartoon style. So I sculpted a master which I cloned and painted. 

Some Sugar Skull art have the coolest elements added to the skull, making the skull feeling like a globe on which all kinds of stuff is happening. So I set about making one with the above type of paint style and one painted more traditionally, but with added elements on the skull:

Title: Flame

Title: Transition Crushed

This one has butterflies on the skull made from plastic from found drinking bottles. Two butterflies are crushed by two piles of money handled by the skeleton.

Christmas fairs

This week I received the first batch of Christmas cards and I will be showing them in Wilmslow next weekend! Hopefully they are better than the ones I had last year, which were last minute things and weren't linked enough with Christmas.

I am also making key rings and the first prototypes are finished. The definite versions will have proper rings attached:

Christmas is coming

Huh? Yes, Christmas is coming, the sun has turned its back and the rain has returned. Still it is September, but if I want to have enough sculptures for Christmas I have to start now. But I am not so sure I want to make the same sculptures as last year, it would be a bit repetitive, so I decided to first do another attempt in making Christmas cards and this time finding a style that I like and would appeal to enough viewers to buy. Last year I had cards that weren't directly visible as being Christmas cards.

The above was the 'Ghost of Christmas Future' card with an Easter chick left for dead in the streets of Manchester.

A few weeks ago I was testing a new paint style for some new decorated skulls and ended up with this:

After making a skull with that, I decided to use the same style to create Christmas cards:

....... then I started thinking, but what if this fails too? So, I still need to get back and figure out what small sculptures to make for Christmas. Christmas themed or not, that is the question. 

Oh yeah, this is a sample of what I made for 2012:

Fictional fossils

I have been making fictional fossils for some time now. It all started when I wanted to make my imagination around the GoGo bird real. I decided that things become real by making them look real but also by fixing them in time and history. Especially in history far before I was born. So the first GoGo fossil arrived some time back:

I made a couple of them and got occupied with other stuff until the beginning of this year when I decided that this concept was to good to leave and started making bigger fictional fossils, like the Wile E Coyote fossil:

Off course Wile E Coyote isn't my own imagination, but that of someone else. So this is very much a pop art sculpture in a very unusual way. It doesn't look like a Lichtenstein or Warhol by far, so it is a very new way of using popular culture.

My GoGo bird isn't part of popular culture .....yet, although it is a crossover between the extinct Dodo and Roadrunner. In my last big fossil my GoGo bird reappeared, but I wanted to do something different and decided to add another bit to the story. So the GoGo was developed by Dr. Freakinstyle to make the Dodo run faster and preventing it to become extinct. But off course even the Roadrunner had predators like Wile E Coyote chasing it and so must have the GoGo. I decided to create a scene in which both appeared and in the same time show a new creature as a fossil without having it as a sculpture 'in flesh'. Normally I translate, which is an interesting process, the fictional character into a anatomically correct fossil. This isn't easy and sometimes pushes you to create something slightly unrealistic or even a bit inconsistent. So this was what I cam up with: 

In it you see that the predator, which is a cyclops, drags a GoGo bird with him. This however doesn't mean the predator is very successful, it is just a frozen moment in time. And then I read the newspaper a week ago and found this article in which two rivals where together in a battle when they both died and got fossilised: 

I'll post in in a bigger size on my Facebook fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/Dr.Freakinstyle

I just love fossils and enjoy the skills to make them!

Artist?

I sometimes look back where I came from, because I have come from far to arrive where I am today. That is being an artist. I am still not comfortable with defining myself like that. I never REALLY decided to become one. I just wanted to make cool sculptures and work part time and see what happened.

But I come from far as in, not from the UK and not from an art background in every sense. So I needed to get used to a different language and culture, although the last thing was probably the easiest. I also needed to learn EVERYTHING there is to learn about art.

So a couple of years down the road and I get the feeling people take me serious when it comes to making art and I can say again that I have pretty much learned a new profession AGAIN! Yes, I have done that a couple of times before. This gives me the feeling I can almost do anything without any experience, that I can take on the world with a lot of skills and the most important one being' to be able to adapt and learn, learn, learn...
Yet, the more I seem to get confident in everything, the less chance I seem to have of actually getting a job. So I am know pushed in doing this full time. I still can't believe that people won't hire me. It sounds a bit arrogant, but I would be a better than average employee and it frustrates me to see people 'working' and actually doing a crap job.

I have had a lot of practice saying; 'I am an artist and I make sculptures'. I guess not having a job, there is no doubt that this would be the way to describe me. Describe me? Huh? Yes, it seems that whatever you do, it is THE thing to ask to get to know somebody, but I think in my case they would mis something, because I am just as much a sport enthusiast. Ok, it now feels a bit strange to say 'I am an athlete'.

Ok ok ok, I am an artist.....