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Monday 27 February 2012

You Don't Have To Have Suicidal Tendencies To Work Here...

But It Helps!


Not my happiest piece but it turned out REALLY well.  The glove is because it's impossible to cover an existing hand and still make it look to scale.  The washed out colours really make it, and I was able to get great skin tones and even liver spots!

I'm going to be in school for a bit so production may lag...now now, stop your cryin'.  I didn't say I was stopping completely.  On Friday we will determine who was the winner of the piece I shall mutate next from my previous post.  Don't forget to tell your friends to come and vote!



Thanks again for all your support!

K



Saturday 25 February 2012

Hell's Bell

Hell's Bell






Who couldn't use Hell's Bell?  Call your friends to a cannibal feast, or be the official timekeeper in a game of Russian Roulette.  A million uses for Hell's Bell...and all it will cost you is your soul!

I'm not crazy about this piece and I think the reason is that I mutated it too much.  With the first couple it was subtle changes to the piece and alot of art.  I think I should have stopped with the tail and hands and not done the skin peeling back around the face here.  Meh, you're your own worst critic.  Clowns are creepy as it is, making them MORE creepy is fun.
Now that I'm starting to gain a 'collection', I find myself wondering what I'm going to do with them.  I thought it would be really funny to try and re-donate them, but then you don't get to see people's reactions when they open the box.  Maybe I could smuggle them back into a thrift store and just place them back on the shelves then try to blend in like a shopper and watch as people come across them...you can't get in trouble for reverse shop-lifting can you?  Shop-dropping?  Plus if my plan failed miserably I'd probably have to pay for my own property to get them back out of the store.  I couldn't just abandon them...I've put too much of myself into each piece.  I'd like to sell them, but have no idea of their worth.  Each one has hours of work put into them, and are guaranteed one of a kinds.  Maybe I'll get a booth at one of those festivals in the summer and try to solicit my wares.
Lots to ponder.  Enjoy!



Keith

You Choose The Next Victim...

Greetings Friends!  I'm starting to collect quite a few pieces that require mutating and am having a hard time deciding which piece to do next.  I've been busy working on a couple pieces and hope to have them finished in the next little bit, so while I put the finishing touches on those I would like you to choose from the following pieces and enter your choice into my comments section!  Please refrain from suggesting ways to mutate (for legal reasons should I decide to sell these later on...).  Here are your choices:


^Wee Lad^


^Wee Lass^


^Boppo^


^A Poor Choice To Take A Nap^


^Bedtime Bear (Music Box)^


^Bring Out Your Dead^


^Pre Emptive Strike^

^Wanderin'^


^Cherub^


^Twisted Ankle^


The choice is yours!  Voting starts...............................NOW!




Saturday 18 February 2012

All For You...

"It's not fair, Thomas!"
"I know Marg, I know...but you heard the doctor.  It's just not meant to be for us."  Thomas reached across the table and squeezed his wifes hand.  With the other she wiped tears away from her puffy red eyes.
"I would give anything Thomas, anything for a baby."
A shadow cast itself over the table, the couple looked up to find a sharp dressed man smiling down at them.  His sudden presence seemed intrusive and yet they felt captivative, time seemed to hang heavy in the air as they waited to hear what if anything he had to say.
"Excuse me,"  He said in a deep voice.  "I couldn't help but overhearing your situation.  Perhaps I can help."






Perhaps it's too early in my mutating career for something like this, but this piece was screaming to be altered from the moment I picked it up.  It's wonderfully done, I really didn't have to do much to created depth and shading as it was already in the piece but it lacked soul.  If you look at the original the eyes and the expressions of the new parents was so eerily lifeless and unemotional I couldn't NOT alter it in this way.

The hardest part of this piece was the goats head.  I was using a substance very similar to mighty putty, but it became very tacky as it dried and when it warmed up it didn't stay the way you wanted it to by the time it settled which is why it lacks some detail.  I've since purchased a different type of air drying clay for future projects.

I do LOVE the childs pajamas.  The original had a design of one circle surrounded by 5 smaller circles on them.  I'm not sure if this has some religious significance, but it did make creating the mini pentagrams alot easier and the end result makes me laugh because I can't help but imagine some devil worshipers walking through Babys-R-Us and picking these up saying 'Oh, these are cute!'.

I was so excited to post this piece that I haven't glazed it, and the pics were taken quite quickly so they may change in the next few days.  I'm still working on my photo skills and some of the feedback from my last piece was that my backdrop for Jenny was lacking a little sumpin' sumpin' so I tried to spice it up a bit.

I look forward to and appreciate feedback, although try to keep the hate mail to a minimum. I'm NOT a satanist.

KBu

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Minor Name Change...

It came to my attention that Manic Ceramic is already taken by a ceramic store in the states.  With the help of some friends I've settled on Precious Mutations as the new name for my creations.  My good friend Adam has even been so gracious as to help me secure preciousmutations.com as my very own website which link directly to my blog at this time.

Thanks to all who helped me brainstorm a new name, and I hope you enjoy Precious Mutations and all it has to offer....which isn't much....yet....BUT IT'S COMING!

Thumbs Up!


I just wanted to give a big thumbs up to all the people who came an visited my initial blog!  I officially have two followers!  Publishing my own blog has been something I've wanted to do for a quite some time but my lack of know how, coupled with the idea that I didn't really think people would be interested in my art left me finding ways to keep it low on my priority list.  But it's out there now...no going back...gotta keep it going.

I'm going to try to keep the focus of my blog on my art, but also have the occasional need to write as well so you may find the odd chapter of a story that may never be written.  I'm more of a conceptionalist as opposed to a...completist?

I think the biggest reason I have trouble completing things is that my imagination far exceeds my abilities (and my patience).  It's the reason I'm seldom satisfied in restaurants.  As I sit there, the hunger part of my brain goes crazy with unreasonable idea that the waiter or waitress is going to come back with the best meal the cook has ever made...but really she brings me the meal he or she has made a million times before trying desperately to make it taste exactly the same way every time because the average person expects consistency.  I think it's something everyone struggles with, but they all deal with it in two ways.  Either you blame yourself for having too high of expectations, or others for not meeting your high expectations. It's not the waiters fault, it's not the cooks fault, it's my fault because I let my imagination get the best of me.  I need to better manage my expectations.

This was a sketch, that I scanned and edited on photoshop with my very limited knowledge of the program.  I now have illustrator as well and edit using that program, but am still limited by my lack of ability to properly use all the functions.

As I mentioned in my 'Jenny' post, I have some experience in painting miniatures.  Jenny was probably 5x bigger than what I'm used to painting which added all new obstacles I was not anticipating, like having to create your own textures and layers.  I'm a hands on learner though so while I may get frustrated at making the mistake at the time, I love finding ways to make it work and am exstatic when it finally works.

So again I just wanted to say thanks for coming out to my inaugural post, and give you a heads up as to what to expect in the future...just don't set your expectations too high and we'll do just fine ;)

KBu

Sunday 12 February 2012

Jenny


Jenny missed going out to play.  She missed the sunshine, the squirrels and her friend Peter.  A few days ago her parents had told her that she wasn't allowed to go outside anymore and plunked themselves down in front of the television.  They'd been watching the news constantly, and wouldn't let her have a turn to watch cartoons.  They just kept watching the news as people cried and screamed and fires burned.  When she tried to watch with them they would shoo her from the room, telling her everything was going to be ok and to go play with her toys, but she was sick of her toys.  She wanted to play with Peter, the boy from down the street.  When she asked they told her it was too dangerous to go outside and went back to watching the news.  Jenny was bored, she wanted to go outside, would they even notice if she went out just for a few hours?  She could probably go and be back before they even noticed.  She tiptoed to the back door, quietly unslid the chain lock and slipped outside.

She was right, her parents didn't know she had gone until nightfall...




This is a statue that I've primed and repainted.  I was inspired by an artist from Brampton by the name of David Irvine.  You can see his work at http://www.gnarledbranch.com/.  It's fantastic, stop reading my crap and look at it right now, then come back!

Alright welcome back...David had the brilliant idea of cruising thrift shops, yard sales and the like for old pieces of art that people have decided they don't love anymore.  Then in the style of those pieces he adds his own spin on it.  My personal favorite is 'Partners in Crime'.  David's only rule is that he doesn't cover the original artists signature.

David inspired me to head out to my own local thrift shops in hopes that I would stumble across something to stir up my own creative juices.  I came to the display cabinet of ceramic figures and got to thinking about all the warhammer paints I had kicking around.  I collected quite a few of the warhammer pieces but something was always missing from painting them.  I tried changing the colours around from the 'suggested' coding, but it still felt like cheating.  Nor could I bring myself to spending my weekends in crowded game shops getting my geek on with kids half my age laughing at my inability to counter a simple dwarf regiment.  So I ended up with a tupperware container full of paints with lovely names like 'rotting flesh' and 'bubonic brown'.

The ceramic figurines began to change before my eyes, in Jenny's case it was the akwardness of her stance.  Others stared back at me with pale, unpainted faces with souless eyes (as you will see in future posts).  These things are creepy...they just need to have that creepiness exposed!

So home they came with me, a small collection to start with and see how it goes.  I've used some model clay to add a few details, primed them up and added my own paint job.  Jenny is my first.  I'm sure they'll get better as I go.  I'm pretty happy with my first attempt though.

KBu