2007-07-03

so how do you get your ideas?

Well I know it's been a while.... I've had a few enquiries lately, from people wanting to see my website (gulp). Truth is - I've been lax on that account also & managed (with no effort at all) to let my web-hosting expire... So the least I can do at this point is to update the blog! I've gone off on a bit of a tangent for the past few months and have given the character sculpting a rest in lieu of having a go at painting. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much, so my little diversion has become a major detour! Anyway, back to characters. I'm often asked where or how I get my ideas. Well there's no definitive answers - sometimes they seem to come out of the clear blue sky. Sometimes they hit in that moment between sleep and awake, but more often than not, it's an evolution of an idea that starts with a seed... Sometimes it's strictly about the character and sometimes it's about a technical challenge - something that I've not tried before. More often than not, it's a bit of both. Following, are a few of my favourite characters and a (hopefully) brief explanation of how they were conceived.

This is "Karl, King of Karaoke". I think karaoke is pretty funny in and of itself. There is usually alcohol involved and participants are often operating on false courage. Karl evolved from an evening when I had occasion to stay by myself at a downtown hotel. I was bored and upon entering the hotel I had heard odd music emanating from the bar, so I thought I'd wander on down to take a look. What I saw (and heard, unfortunately) were a group of Japanese businessmen egging each other on to sing. The miracle that happened each time one of them would take possession of the microphone, was that he would become Elvis! The more Elvis-like, the more appreciative the applause. I've hyped up the costuming considerably on my performer, but I suspect that his vocals aren't much better than those would-be Elvii!

This is Madelaine Monroe. I'm hoping that the connection to the famous Marilyn Monroe pose would have been obvious before I introduced her. This character formulated in my mind after I had seen the fore-mentioned image and had a desire to try something a little more difficult. I'm not inclined to make beautiful people; I gravitate to those who are somewhat "grittier", so the bag-lady idea was a natural. I wanted the character to be joyful, despite her less-than- fortunate circumstances, and I wanted her dress to look like it had been caught by an updraft. Originally I had even considered placing a fan under the grid, but ran into complications. As well, I thought I would end up having to price her out of the market if I persisted with that train of thought. In the end I wired the edges of her skirt. An interesting side story to this one, is that she has my husband's legs. Her original legs were far too thin for a lady who does a lot of walking. While I was pondering this dilemna, my husband walked by with shorts on. "Stop right there!", I shouted, "She needs your legs!"

This is an older sculpt called "Bridging the Gap". It's part of a series of "Interactions on a Bench" which I will talk more about in a later post. At my day job I work with at-risk teenagers. One day in a group discussion they were bemoaning the fact that some of them had been kicked out of the mall at lunch for making too much noise. We talked about stereotyping and they felt that they were getting a bad rap just because of the way that they looked and dressed. Anyway, I decided to create a couple of age-gapped characters who had met by chance on a bus stop bench. The technical difficulty in this one was to create a true interaction, and especially achieving eye contact.

Alright, well there's lots more that I could add to this theme, but they will have to wait for another day. I need to go get some exercise!

1 comment:

S. Nicolas Originals said...

SURPRISE!!!! Oh Boy! Do I love your sculpts Coralie and I miss you too. So glad to see you are getting back into sculpting again. It would be a shame if you gave it up entirely.
Come visit me at my blog.
Hugs,