Guitar Crab #3

This is #3 of the series. #1 was a stratocaster type design, #2 was an acoustic modeled after a Martin. This one is a flying V. Can you tell I’m a (bad) guitar player myself? Just to spice things up, I also gave him an eye piercing. I thought the eyes needed more black to sort of match the guitar, so I enclosed the eyes in black bottlecaps.

Part of the reason I like doing these is that each one is a mini engineering challenge. It takes a lot of time to make everything fit exactly right. It’s fun, but quite labor intensive. I also applied some molding paste which I used to make a “popcorn ceiling” type texture.

3 new ones. First use of sheetmetal!

Things I learned:  sheetmetal is hard to cut straight.   It’s harder than you would think to drive nails through it.  It’s also sharp (though I filed down the final pieces so they wouldn’t be.)  This fish sat on my workbench for a long time before I figured out what to do with it, but I like the finished product.

As for the whale, it’s similar to another design but I decided to switch things up and make it pink.  It’s made from repurposed tinge and groove wood.

The last one is based on an actual fish, the mahi-mahi aka dolphin fish.  My creations dont usually bear a strong resemblance to actual species, but this one does.  I finished it off with some gel on the fins for texture.

10-22-18: I must be going through an orange phase

A variety of creatures. For some reason, I felt like using a lot of orange. Maybe it’s because of the changing seasons, even though the leaves have not even started to turn here in Richmond, VA. The seahorse was completely different like a month ago. I’d been staring at it for a while and couldn’t decide if I wanted to leave it or redo it. I opted to blow it up and start over and I’m glad I did. I like it much better than the original.

Muscle Shark Bro

I’ve done some muscle crabs, but this is my first muscle shark.

Labor Day Lobster

made of 2 different thicknesses of wood, copper wire, acrylic paint.  Love how this one turned out.  

Clawed Shot

Inspired by the (possibly apocryphal) story of Babe Ruth calling his shot.  Commissioned.  

Earth meets sea

Not a fiddler crab

keep your snout up

Daydream Octopus

New fish and a crab

Finished octopus in his new habitat: beach house!

4 new fish

Sneery McPunk (top left) is my fav.  He has 2 piercings.   

The first cow

More realistic than I usually do.   

Wooden Fish

Here’s what I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks.  Lot of different techniques and styles but all are made from salvaged wood.  Prices start at $30.  Check out my website and let me know if you have any special requests.

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Old subject, new perspective.   What do you think?

Old subject...New Technique ( Half Crab Reimagined: 20”x16” acrylic ink on canvas)

I’ve done lots of “half crabs” because they are some of my best-sellers, but I got tired of painting them the same old way.  I did this one by:

1). Sketching it out in pencil

2). Using masking fluid over the pencil lines, adding a few bumps with clear tar gel, and letting it dry overnight.  

3). applying blue, green, and yellow inks (plus tons of water) to the surface

4). I thought it was still lacking texture, so I dumped some rock salt in certain areas, which is one of my favorite techniques

5). Let it dry and had my kids peel the dried masking fluid off, creating the final product.   The white lines are the ones created when the masking fluid was removed.  

Giant octopus....complete!

And the octopus is done!  Small child included for size comparison.

Flamingo wearing Chucks

Continuing my theme of making stuff out of wood, here's a flamingo.  I think it's whimsical.  Made of repurposed pallet wood, copper wire, beads and paint.  I didn't think realistic feet would look good, so this guy got some sneakers.   

The logistical challenges of painting 18 square feet of octopus.

I was recently commissioned to paint a 6 foot by 3 foot octopus, which is great because I love painting sea creatures.  It's a much larger version of an earlier work that I did.  There are some unique challenges on something this big, namely acquiring the canvas, surface preparation, and shipping.  Here is the original version of the painting, which was 12"x24"

Originally, I was going to buy a huge roll of canvas, cut off what I needed, then ship it to the client in a roll.  The downside is that they would have to mount it themselves.  My wife suggested I go with 3 smaller (but still very large) canvases.  Ultimately, the client liked it so we're going with that.  I'm now on day 3 of the project.  Day one was buying materials and priming the surface.  I had to do this in the garage to avoid making a huge mess in the house.  Day 2 was sketching it out and doing the background, which is yellow fading into orange and then red.  I've got a little touchup work to do thanks to our dog walking on the wet canvas (which I had to lay on the floor since it won't fit on my art desk) but I think it's going well.  The boring parts are done, next comes the fun part:  painting the octopus.  How it looks right now:

I will update once the finished project is done.