J.D. Mac Sculpts

. A blog for finished work, wips, sketches, inspiration and randomness . Jamie D. Macfarlane . Freelance Sculptor . [email protected]

[julienschoirfer]

R.I.P. YASUSHI NIRASAWA 1963 8 26 - 2016 2 2.

Last week the artist Yasushi Nirasawa passed away on February 2 (2016) at the age of 52. He was an talented comics-books artist, character designer, sculptor and worked for video games, movies, TV series, toys design and collectibles. Nirasawa was friend with artist Takeya Takayuki, Terrada Katsuya, Masakazu Katsura (who make him appear in his manga Zetman).

[blackrabbitsculpture]

Here’s a loooooong overdue update on the Honeybadger half of the “Termite Warriors" for you lovely people! Fur texture fun!

[pardeemonster]

Being an artist is weird. Our job is to create something from nothing. And we have to fail at creating something from nothing over and over and over until one of those failed “somethings” is decent enough to show people. Then we pile up enough of those decent “somethings” and there’s a small chance that maybe ONE of those “somethings” might grab someone’s attention and make them smile or inspire them to share it or tell someone about it. Then we start over again, and create more, and fail more, and try to make another “something” from nothing. And after all of this, there is an even smaller chance that one of those people that noticed our “somethings” might like what we do so much that they give us a little bit of money so that they can keep them. And that money helps us continue to be allowed to create and fail and create and fail and create and hopefully succeed in small amounts enough that we can eventually make a living creating something from nothing. Less than 1% of people that see our art actually give us money to support the future of our creations. Not just with this type of illustrative art. With all independent art. Film, music, literature, poetry, photography, animation, sculpture, comics, toy-making, etc. and we never once stop to think that it’s a dumb career move to keep going. It’s a weird feeling being an artist. But it’s also an amazing feeling. And that amazing feeling is generated by every single synapse from every brain and eyeball that sees and shares our art enough to trickle down to the 1% of you that help monetarily support what we do and allow us to keep doing it until we die. So, basically, whether you’ve ever supported me directly, hired me to scribble, purchased even ONE of my licensed products from @zerofriendsart or @upperplayground or @nuvango, or just posted something I have made and showed your friends, thank you for literally keeping my creativity alive for way longer than I ever imagined back when I was tracing Spawn and The Far Side comics and staring into the sky on my lunch breaks at KB Toys. Happy Thanksgiving. I appreciate you. Support some independent art this weekend, wherever and however you can.

[jdmacsculpts]

A small creature bust w.i.p in Monster Clay I'm currently trying to finish. Measures just 5 inches to the top of his ears.

[jdmacsculpts]

A Krang sketch in Monster Clay I was messing about with the other week.

[jdmacsculpts]

Squidder coin sculpted for Skelton Crew Studio. Based on the art of Ben Templesmith from his graphic novel 'The Squidder'. MagicSculp apoxie clay sculpted over styrene. Coin base and lettering was laser cut by Skelton Crew. Measures 4.25 inches across.

[jdmacsculpts]

Tony Chu inaction figure prototype sculpted for Skelton Crew Studio. First in a new line of figures based on the art of Rob Guillory from the comic book series CHEW. Stands just under 6 inches tall. Painted pics coming soon…

[jdmacsculpts]

A sixth scale head study of Sam Lesser from Locke & Key sculpted in NoNameClay. Based on the art of Gabriel Rodriguez.

[scutteh]

Bit more progress on my Kaiju/dragon.  Thought I’d try something other than the generic render test(which you can see in the second image). Recently I’ve been really digging the neons used in Dave Rapoza’s newer work. To get this I layered a cutout filtered image of the normal map over the image. After that I hand painted the background (with some custom brushes) and played around with some opacity.

Beats just regular WIP renders anyway :) 

Sculpted in Zbrush

[atlbladerunner]

Drinks Before Dinner - 9 3/4” x 28” - acrylic on wood - 2014

[blackrabbitsculpture]

oryus wrote: You know I’ve always really admired your paint jobs on your sculptures. How do you get them to be less flat? Or maybe if it’s not too inconvenient whats your process to painting on your sculptures?

Blackrabbitsculpture:

First: thank you! I’m glad you like the way I paint my sculptures! 

The exact techniques I use when I’m painting a sculpture depend on that individual piece, but there are definitely some things that I do with each piece.

So:

I make sure the paint I use (I always use acrylic paint, though I know there are folks who use oil paints) is thin. Thick paint is going to cause a brush to leave brush strokes, and thick paint will also obscure fine detail on the sculpture. If I’m using tube acrylics, which are thicker, I thin them with water as I’m using them. The paints I use now (CelVinyl, also known as acrylic copolymer, from Cartoon Colour) are almost the perfect consistency out of the bottle, but I still thin them a bit in order to make them go a bit further. 

Step one for me is always priming the sculpture. Technically, polymer clay sculptures don’t really need to be primed if one plans to paint with water-soluble paints (like acrylic), but primer can even out the color of a piece, and it also has a bit more “tooth” to it, giving the paint something to stick to.

Next, after giving the primer at least 24 hours to dry and bond with the sculpture, I start with a basecoat of one layer of very thin paint over the whole piece.  At this point, I’m not all that worried about precision—I’m just blocking in some basic colors in the midrange, in terms of value. I use a big, soft brush and light, rapid strokes, making sure I spread the paint on the brush over as much as the sculpture as I can. On my Ganesha sculpture, I started out with a thin layer of a warm, brownish-gray all over his body. His dhoti got a layer of vermillion. At this point, I left the base unpainted, since I knew it might get messy and would need cleanup later anyway. I suppose I could have masked it off, but didn’t really see the point.

After giving the basecoats a 15-20 minutes to dry thoroughly, I just keep building up the layers until I can no longer see primer. On Ganesha, because the vermillion I used on his dhoti was translucent (it can be tough to find opaque reds and yellows, so these colors, and the colors mixed using them, obviously, often need more coats of paint), I lost count of the number of layers I put down. The gray of his skin was much more opaque, and consequently, needed fewer layers, which was good, since I put a lot of work into detailing his skin with tons of wrinkles and folds and I didn’t want the paint to obscure those. 

With the base colors done, I usually move on to detail work—blocking in areas of other colors, moving from coarse to fine, larger brushes to smaller brushes. On Ganesha, his dhoti got some very preliminary shading, with darker reds and purples in the folds. I added a layer of pinkish areas of depigmentation on his trunk, head, ears, back, torso, arms, hands, knees, and feet.

Sometimes, at this point, when preliminary details are done, I like to go in and do a wash of brown (burnt umber or raw umber {I can’t remember which} plus a little black, in Ganesha’s case) over the whole piece. I make sure the paint is thin, watery, and translucent. I also try not to put a ton on my brush—since it’s watery, a little will go a long way. The wash will find the nooks, crannies, recesses and wrinkles of a piece and accumulate there. This is a very useful property, since it acts to accentuate shadows and details. Sometimes I use a damp paper towel or a clean, damp brush to spread the wash even thinner over select areas, or to remove os much of it as possible so it doesn’t obscure too much of the detail I’ve already blocked in. With Ganesha, the wash layer succeeded in toning down the overwhelming brightness of the pinkish brown areas, it increased the amount of warm brownish tones in the gray areas, and it united both areas of his skin. I also used the wash in more than one layer in areas that I wanted to shade a bit more. I didn’t use a wash on his dhoti, but I did begin to shade the folds and wrinkles in the “cloth” with very thin, watery layers of purples, reds, and oranges, almost like one would paint a watercolor. I also went back in and did some more work on the pink “freckles” to increase the illusion of depth and translusency of his skin. 

Another very useful technique is drybrushing. I add a very miniscule amount of paint that is in the same range of color as my base coat colors, but lighter in value to a dry brush and go over select areas of a piece with light, rapid strokes. Since the brush is dry and there isn’t much paint on it, what little is there will dry quickly. In drybrushing, the paint on the brush tends to be deposited on the high points of the surface of the piece. The paint doesn’t tend t get in to the areas where the wash did, and lightens the high points just enough to create the illusion of a highlight. It also does wonders to bring out all the detail and texture in the areas where it’s used. I did quite a fair amount of drybrushing in progressively lighter shades of gray-brown on Ganesha, since I wanted to bring out as much skin detail as possible. The dhoti got some vermillion-yellow-orange drybrushing on the highest points of its wrinkles. 

Lastly, I go over the whole piece and add fine detail, cover any errant blobs of paint with the appropriate color, paint the eyes, and clean up any areas where differently colored elements of the sculpture come in to contact with one another. For Ganesha, that ended up being the area where his belly came into contact with the edge of the dhoti, and the area where his thighs emerged from the dhoti.

And that’s it, more or less, other than a coat of matte varnish for the majority of the piece, and gloss for things like the eyes, mouth, and claws, for example. The only other things I want to stress are:

1.) How important it is for an artist to experiment with their paints and brushes to figure out what works best for them. This experimentation is key to discovering new techniques (well, new to the individual artist, anyway, right?) and figuring out what works for a given piece. You can always use rubbing alcohol to remove the acrylic paint and start over with the paint job. 

2.) How tough this type of work is on the brushes used! Painting a sculpture is not painting a canvas (obviously), and the brushes just don’t hold up the way they do when used on a flat surface. I buy inexpensive brushes, and make sure I buy multiple brushes of the styles I like best and use most. I’m not the biggest fan of Michael’s, but one thing they’ve got a good selection of is nice, cheap, synthetic and natural brushes that I don’t feel guilty about being rough with. 

Well, I hope this novel of an answer about my painting process is helpful. I’m really sorry that I didn’t get to your ask sooner, but I hope that this reply makes up for my tardiness! Sorry about the length, too, but brevity really isn’t my strong suit. I guess my painting process is more involved than I thought, now that I’ve put it into words. :)

Thanks again, and happy painting/sculpting/art-ing! 

[jdmacsculpts]

Half finished EC Comics inspired witch from the end of last year. Casteline and monster clay. About 12 inches tall.

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

NOVA EXPRESS  by Paul Komoda  For MONSTERPALOOZA 2014

[jdmacsculpts]

Solomon Grundy

Painted resin cast from 2008.

1:8 scale. 9 inches tall.

[thomasboatwright-deactivated201]

I’ve been drawing shapes left handed and finishing them with the right. Hellboy has a fun bullfrog design.

I missed out on Hellboy week. With my hand in such a mess, things that used to inspire me only act to infuriate me. I’ve unfollowed so many artists and Mignola was among the first to go.

I mostly look at classic illustration and cats these days.

[jdmacsculpts]

002 by Blairsculpture Sasquatch by Robert Blair

[jdmacsculpts]

Back in January I attended a life drawing class for the first time in nearly 15 years. It went about as well as expected. In other words... shite. Hope to go back again soon. Miss doing life drawing on a regular basis.