Author: Kevin Gosselin

Detective Sam Spade

Following my two recent commissions, the vampire and the artist series suffocating piece, I was asked by the same private collector to create a custom munny with the police officer theme. To be honest, I\’m not a huge fan of police officers especially after my recent experience with jury duty. But after mulling this concept over I did remember one detective that has always arrested my attention. That would be one Sam Spade. Sam Spade is the legendary character from the 1941 film classic, The Maltese Falcon, portraited by one of Hollywood\’s best, Humphrey Bogart. Now in the film, Bogie plays a private detective and not a police officer, but I took some liberty with the character and suggested a Sam Spade from his years prior to his private practice.
The custom was created using a 4\” Mini Munny, wire, polymer clay and acrylic paint.

My Six Month Hiatus From Running

About six months ago I decided to change my life. And so far I think it\’s been a good choice. The choice I write of is of course the one to shift my career toward the fine arts and away from the commercial. As I said, it\’s been a good choice so far and things seem to be going very well.

However, it has not come without it\’s sacrifices. The sacrifice in particular that I write of is that of my other favorite pass time. Running.
Before I began this shift my life was work and running. Pretty much all the free time I had was spent out on the trails and roads of Washington. I love running and it\’s helped me become the person I am today. It\’s helped me to have the drive to reach for my goals. It was the systematic approach to running that I am now applying to my art. The simple idea of consistency, dedication and a failure to quit when things seem tough.
But running was more than the discipline. It was my social life.
As many others I\’m sure, I\’ve led a bit of a vagabond life since I left home to attend art school. I left N.H. for Florida. Then Florida to California and then finally settled on Seattle. When I moved to Seattle I again knew no one less my brother and it was running that helped me meet many great Seattlites. And over time these fellow runners become your other family. Well, for six months I have not run. I have dedicated myself to my art and nothing else. And I miss my running family.
This last weekend a good friend who is also making some big life changes came down from Vancouver and visited her running family. It had been a while since I had seen her and the rest of the group and I took the opportunity to catch up. What was suppose to be just a walk around a park turned into breakfast. After breakfast I was convinced I had to continue the reunion of sorts by attending the running club quarterly poker night.
To wrap things up, it was a good day. I had a great time visiting with my friends, getting to know some of them a little more and meeting new ones. I miss running. I miss my friends and I hope that I can get back to my regular training soon.

Updated web site

I\’ve been meaning to do this. Nothing too special going on here just added some pages to the blogger site. I decided that even though I have extensive knowledge in web development and a hosting server at my disposal with my own unique domain, it\’s easier just to use the blogger tools.

I suppose at some time I\’ll make myself a complete custom site but I\’d rather spend my time doing the art I like and less on what I\’m running away from. Besides, I was able to figure out how to add static pages to blogger. So now I have an about page that quickly explains my life as an artist, a contact page with form for visitors to submit questions and a basic gallery page where I will hopefully add great pieces of art to inspire the masses to flock to my store and buy my stuff or commission me. Or something like that.

Blank Franks Sold

I just sold my first two Blank Franks. The toy customizer Brixpix in Largo, FL contacted me and asked me how many of them I had as he wanted to buy a few. This got me thinking about something that had been a nagging thought since I posted the Blanks for sale. They\’re not perfect.

That\’s right. It\’s my first stab at my own platform and for the most part I really like this guy. I think he has a lot of potential and I hope to continue doing lots of work with him. The problem I have is that I haven\’t finished developing him yet. I have a prototype mold created which these Blank were created with. I made 3 casts of which my nephew got one, and then I had two left over. I can make as many as I want but what I really want to do is refine the piece more. Overall, the piece needs some generally smoothing of the larger shapes. I want true arcs and lines and I don\’t quite have that yet. There are also some imperfections in the cast, tiny bubbles that you get when you\’re not using a vacuum chamber.
At any rate, I was completely honest with the buyer, and I told him that although I didn\’t want to kill a sale, this was the reality of the pieces.
He bought them anyways. So he has the 2nd and 3rd casts of the official first run of Blank Frank. There was actually another mold before that but it went so horrible I will not be counting them. I am going to do my best to make sure I get around to refining this platform. I really think it has legs.
Thanks Brixpix!

Suffocating


Here is my latest custom done by commission for a very nice client who gave me complete freedom to be creative. Well, maybe not complete freedom. There was one requirement and that was what inspired this concept. The requirement was that the dunny needed to fit inside an acrylic baseball trophy case. The collector has a beautiful showcase of Dunnys all featuring the artists particular styles. I really could do whatever I wanted but when he told me about the restriction I have to admit I was a little stumped. I\’m building a reputation(or trying to) as a artist who modifies the platform in a manner that hopefully hasn\’t been seen before. I like to add to the platform with sculpture and to be restricted to the height of the Dunny at first put a big cramp on my style. But I then began thinking about who the character was. Why was he in the case? What would happen if he was in the case? That\’s it. I now had my idea. My Dunny would be trapped in the case and fighting for his life. I really like this idea because when the client showed me the case of Dunnys that other artists had done, I thought to myself, how can I stand out amongst all this great work? Well, all the other are standing in the same Dunny pose and this guy is seated with ears drooping. Mission accomplished. Now my only fear is that I\’m too different and my Dunny will stick out like a sore thumb making my client remove him from the company of the others.

I had debated for a bit whether or not to make this guy a creature. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I wanted the focus to be on the struggle between life and death. This Dunny is at the brink of death. He\’s just passed out and has moments to live. If I was to make the character a creature it might then become more of a narrative on the creature and less on the struggle.
To make this guy I ended up chopping of the head and repositioning it at an angle. I also cut off the legs and angled them out to allow for a seated position. Once that was done I cut out a mouth and eye sockets, created a large tongue and eyes, primed and painted and can say now that I am very happy with the results. To create the sweating look I simply applied a gloss varnish over the entire piece and then used a matte varnish to dull the areas I wanted dry. This created the sweat on his shirt and piss on his pants. I then applied gloss varnish in drops on his forehead and dripping from eyes and nose. I really love how the gloss looks like sweat beads.
Overall I think this is one of my favorite pieces so far. The paint job was real subtle but works for me. The sculpt is polished with only a couple minor things I would have done better upon reflection. Considering the size of this thing, 3\” Dunny, I couldn\’t be much happier. This piece and the Vampire Dunny were the first and second 3\” customs I have done and I found them to be taxing. The bodies as so small to work with and make it difficult for me to get the results I want. I\’ll probably be staying away from pieces this small in the future but you never know when I good project might come your way.

Revisiting The Old Job: Web/Graphic Design

oh jeesh, so today I had to go back to my old life of web design and graphic design. A great guy that I used to do a lot of work for contacted me last week to do some very quick web design. I can\’t say no cause it\’s good money and lets face it, I need good money right now cause little baby Alex is on her way in May and this art stuff ain\’t paying so great. I also have this other design job that I started nearly a year ago. I am creating illustrations for a scientific publication. It is the nature of science and research to take a long time to develop and more importantly, to finish.

Anyways, to my point. Today I had to revisit both these jobs and I have to say, I like art more. It was tough going back to the other disciplines. I\’ve been doing the custom sculpture stuff for about 5 months now and I\’m quite happy doing it. The web design wasn\’t so much difficult as it was just there. Without being completely ungrateful to my client, I will say that the subject matter for the design is lacking in the fun factor. I think nearly all the web work I did in the prior 9 years was lacking in fun. Mostly I had corporate clients. Very rarely did I get an exciting product to market. Actually, in defense of this particular client, he has provided me with the majority of the fun projects I\’ve done in the past. Including creating dvd cases for some pretty cool products. At any rate, it\’s fair to say that the toy making I do now is a lot more fun. So to jump back into the old jigs is tough.
I finished the web stuff earlier in the day and moved on… I mean tried to move on to the scientific illustrations and couldn\’t do it. My brain was just repelling the content. Tomorrow I will make a fresh start and must continue and finsih whether I like it or not. For now, or at least the rest of the week it will be scientific illustrations. The funny thing is, last year when I got this job I was very excited about it because it was such a cool job in comparison to what I was doing. However, as I said before, the toy making is just lots more fun. I fear this new lifestyle has completely spoiled me. I have tasted my dream and it will be hard for me to ever accept anything less.

Next Up! WIP


Ok, back in the swing of things. Here\’s my next piece also a commission for the same guy who commissioned the vampire. The only restriction the buyer gave me was that the artist series dunny would be placed in an acrylic baseball collectors case. It didn\’t take me long to realize that there was a concept perfect for this. My little dunny has been placed inside the case but alas he has no air. Just like a firefly on a hot august night, my little dunny is running out of time. I\’ve just finished priming him and will start painting immediately. I hadn\’t originally thought of the dunny urinating but I had some mold rubber left over from another project and it just seemed perfect for this. Another reason why one should never throw anything out.

Vampire Commission


Wow, it\’s been awhile. I\’ve been unable to do much of anything for the last couple weeks due to my being selected for jury duty. It was an amazing experience that I\’ll never forget but it\’s good to be back to work. I was commissioned to do a vampire and this is what I came up with. As you can see from the pictures, the stake is removable. This is a 3\” mini-dunny. I have to say that doing a little sculpt like this was a lot more challenging than I expected. It took just a long if not longer to do this guy than a larger piece due to the difficulty of size. I really wanted to get even more detailed with the anatomy but was unable. The concept was slightly inspired by the artist Brom. I chose to do a kinda Iggy Pop, herion addict/rock star in leather pants vampire. Below is my concept art as well as additional pics.

Ent Munny #2


Check out my latest Munny custom. It\’s a bit different from the last one. I decided I wanted a more childlike face than the tikki one I had done before. I also put more effort into the tree itself. I fashioned this after a real bonsai and I\’m pretty happy with the results. I cut out the belly and made a little world in there. Originally I had planned on making a squirrel to live in there but as this is a mini Munny the squirrel was so tiny I had a hard time with it. It also blocked the view of my cool shrooms which in the end was the deciding factor to leave the guy out. For the colors I also changed things up a bit. Once I finished my sculpt I began planning the colors of the piece. Unlike the awesome painter Bryan Collins, who says he typically thinks of a color scheme before he ever thinks of the concept itself, I generally avoid the color scheme all together and then struggle with it later on. This is something I\’ll eventually(hopefully) get over with time. Anyways, I was looking around to some of the artists I like for a little inspiration and saw on 64 colors site a piece that was all too similar this ent and I was a little disappointed because I really don\’t want to look like I copied anyone else. If I did colors similar to what I had done with my last ent, this would end up way too similar to one of their pieces. So I made sure to avoid using the same colors. For that reason I chose a green scheme. I think this makes it look more like vines than a tree, but what they heck, I like it anyways.

What do you think?