That Perfect Girl is Gone

2014 was at our house, like many others, the year of Frozen. For my younger daughter, who was four at the time, it was all Elsa all day everyday. As a stay-at-home parent, you have two options in this situation: go absolutely, completely bonkers or just embrace it. I opted for the latter. Yes, I know the words to ALL the songs in Frozen, not just “Let It Go.” Yes, I have been seen at stoplights singing “Let It Go” at the top of my lungs with the windows open.

2014 was also the first time I decided to exhibited my work at an arts and crafts show. Nothing huge, just one one sponsored by our public library. When thinking about pieces I would make, I knew I had to make one based upon Elsa, especially after I found some great papers that would perfect for recreating her ice dress. The dress top is a blue vellum with glitter paper beading. The dress is made from a great shiny, not quite metallic paper with blue vellum snow flakes. For the detailing on the arms, I made stencils for the shapes, painted them with glue, and sprinkled them with glitter.

(Process pictures above)

A few days before the show, posted pictures to Facebook of what I would be selling – including my just completed “That Perfect girl is Gone.” The morning of the art show, my buddy Barry (The Grand DM) showed up with his family and immediately purchased Elsa. Apparently, he’d been looking through his feed and his two daughters fell in love with the picture immediately. Needless to say, I was flattered. Then, while his wife took the kids to look through some of the other booths, Barry asked me if I could make a matching Anna they could give the girls for Christmas. No way I could turn that down!

Anna was quite a bit of fun to make, especially since her costume is more intricate than Elsa’s. I used Prismacolor pencils to give the embroidery on her bodice a more realistic look as well as using them for her hair. Her face and hands are hand-painted watercolor paper since I have yet to find a mass produced craft paper that captures normal skin tones well – they are usually too yellow or brown.

The Phantom of the Opera

This recreation of the Playbill for the Broadway smash hit The Phantom of the Opera was commissioned as a Christmas present for theater lover. (My first commission for non friend or relative.)

While the design for this piece is deceptively simple, I actually had to develop several techniques to achieve the desired look: how to glue paper to glass and not have it fall right off as well how to score the heavy water color paper and bend it into shape. I had initially tried my normal layered paper techniques but the results were less than satisfactory so I had to learn to score, fold and bend for a more three-dimensional look. I also had to use a heavier paper so that it could be painted to give the porcelain appearance of the Phantom’s mask. All of the lettering is glued to a separate layer of glass so that it floats above the background.

Wild Ride

Still playing catch up…

Somewhere around two and half years ago, I received a Facebook message from my friend Jeff's wife Lisa. She’d seen pictures of my work and wondered if I could make a Disney-themed piece for Jeff’s birthday. A Disney themed piece for my first commission? Doesn’t get much better than that!

The first hurdle was determining which character from the vast Disney lineup would be right for the project. Jeff had made numerous references to Mr. Smee from Peter Pan in his Facebook posts, so that was my first pitch. Then in the course of conversation with Lisa, he mentioned that his favorite character was Donald Duck. While searching out some Donald Duck reference images, I came across the cartoon short Bee at the Beach (1950) and thought it would be a perfect fit - Jeff and Lisa are big beach people, proponents of the beach life attitude and year-round residents of Oak Island, NC. While I was working on some early ideas, Lisa continued brainstorming and came to the conclusion that maybe something based around one of Jeff’s favorite attractions from Walt Disney World (WDW) would be better, something along the lines of The Hatbox Ghost piece I had made for myself. Maybe something from Pirates of the Caribbean or better yet, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride:

“Jeff loved that ride. His parents took us for a week after we graduated college. They hung out with his sister and left us to ourselves. We had an amazing time one particular day, and it ended with us getting the Mr. Toad car on our last ride as the park was closing. Made Jeff's day. The teenager running the ride thought his excitement was a little weird, but he had fun.”

That was it, we had to do Mr. Toad. Of course, there was a problem -

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closed on September 7, 1998, and was subsequently replaced with The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. (Wikipedia)

I had to recreate something that hadn’t existed for about 15 years. While the attraction still exists at Disneyland, the exterior looks much different from the defunct WDW incarnation. 1998 was still squarely in the pre-digital age and as such, I had to rely on people’s scans of  their “old” photos they had posted to the Web. Luckily, I was able to find enough old photos (and even a 3D VR Rendering) of the entire ride to make a reasonable attempt at recreation:

  

(Some of my reference pictures)

After looking through all the photos I could find, I decided that the best way to capture both the essence of the ride and Jeff’s attachment to it was to make the outer mat layer represent the attraction’s entrance pillars (complete with Medieval Faire canopy) and have the main center layer show the Toad Hall Exterior queue area. Finally, I would have silhouettes of Jeff and Lisa sitting in one of the ride vehicles heading into the first room which would make up the back layer. Here is the sketch I put together sketch for Lisa:

As you can see, the sketch is remarkably close to the final product, except that we eventually changed the tag line to “The Wild Ride Goes On”  and changed the silhouettes from Early 90’s Jeff and Lisa to 2013 Jeff and Lisa (which really only entailed giving Jeff a bit less hair .)

 

Process Pictures

The picture with Mr. Mole gives you a scale idea of the detail I used.

Detail Pictures

Unfortunately, what you can’t see is that the fireplace is fully realized and there are miniature, hand drawn versions of the “Modern Art” painting of Mr. Toad hidden by the car and figures. I didn’t get a chance to photograph them before I had to put it together.

Each and every stone is hand drawn and hand cut, as are the wooden roof shingles

 

This was a really fun project made all the better because it was for friends - there is just something about knowing your art is hanging in a friend’s house.

Leaves, Leaves and Some More Leaves

 

A little more than a year ago, my mom was invited to the wedding of our family friends’ daughter (they were all actually long time neighbors from house where I grew up.) My mom has always been one for special gifts, something out of the ordinary and memorable (often loud and obnoxious.) The couple had  chosen a unique wedding invitation (right) and she thought that a custom cut paper mat for their wedding photo based on the invitation design would be just the one-of-a-kind gift she was looking for.

 

 

Here (left) is the final product: the mat is 13”x19” with a double-matted section for an 8”x10” photograph. In order to accurately replicate the leaves in the original design, I used both light and dark orange craft papers. For each color, I created a small, medium and large leaf shape and then made right-curving and left-curving versions of each size. That’s twelve distinct leaves. I hand cut all the leaves, about 200 in all (enough for some extras) and then added veins with a marker to each and every one. I think I went a bit cross-eyed by the end, but the result was worth it.