#puppet heads

[chernobog13]

Heads for various characters in Bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet theatre.

I want puppets of them all, but especially Songoku (the Monkey King) there in the lower right.

[holaarchives]

paper mache puppet head studies. Looking forward to painting these.

Wish i had a mini airbrush/compressor right about now.

🚧 wip

Miguel Ayala

[inafilm]

[soundiver]

[hattiematya]

Puppet Heads!

Well, if I learnt anything from this exercise it is that I am naturally drawn to puppets without mouths. As you may have noticed, two of my four heads are lacking them, and to be honest the other two nearly were as well. In fact the fourth head started life with me wanting her to be an elephant. She had other ideas and wanted to be an opera singer. They all really obviously had genders to me, but not so much names (except for Billy. I don't know why he struck me as a Billy but he did.)

So. First head, prompt was just to make a head in 3 minutes. I quite liked the slightly flattened crown round her head that I came up with. It meant that she didn't come across in profile hardly at all though. Also I learnt from her that they were all a little on the heavy side (this is why the rest of them ended up on a pen rather than my finger to take the pictures). She was quite a sad little poppet, always looking like someone had just shocked and disappointed her. 

Prompt 2- accentuate a feature. I went for the brows, and came up with Billy. I quite liked Billy. It made me sad to squish him. What I particularly enjoyed about Billy  was the way the cracks in the clay added real personality to his face. As I moved his head to different places the cracks showed up in different ways, which totally changed his mood. He looked a bit sad and disapproving from the front, but if he looked up he looked cheery and hopeful. 

Prompt 3- Pick a shape. Guess which shape I picked. If you didn't guess triangle then I'm offended. This character totally developed as I played with moulding the clay. At first I thought it was going to be a punk, then perhaps a chicken, and what I ended up with was this slightly grumpy looking Colonel. His eyes aren't as obvious as they could be. But like Billy, he looked a lot more soft and gentle from the side or when looking up. 

Finally number 4 was basically do what you want. I wanted to try making an animal, and fancied giving elephant ears a go. But my ears kind of ended up looking more like a fancy hair line, and so elephant became posh Duchess opera singer. This was a very odd one, as when the head is titled down she looks like a disney villain, titled up swaps gender a little and starts laughing. It's in profile that she looks most like a singer. 

I have to admit though it's really made me realise that puppets without mouths are what I'm drawn to the most. 

[redfoxwhitefox]

Dispatches from the fields of Iowa part 3: WHITE FOX

I finally arrived to Grin City after some troubling flights and super delays. Red Fox was kind enough to pick me up from the airport at midnight and drive me, mini van style through the darkness of Iowa. I awoke to another world and immediately was thrown in with a tour of the space, and my studio. Minutes after I finished my tour I was whisked back to Brooklyn. Not Brooklyn, NY but Brooklyn, Iowa was our destination. There the Grin City participants made plans for our pop gallery showing the following week. This was a short stop for the day as a group of 6 of us drove from there to the Grinnell, Iowa Farmers Market for goodies and outreach. Fancy bags for fancy people to carry their fruits and veggies. 

Now Red Fox and I are back in the studio planning/carving twins and reconfiguring chairs and spindles into new creatures. Hopefully by tomorrow controllers will be done and we can get these twins moving. It will be truly exciting. 

A comment on the last two pictures. We are thinking of our next fundraiser, a calendar called Puppetry Pin-Ups?