Tag Archives: Spider-man

Acrylics, Hulk and Spider-man, Paintings, Sculpture

All primed for Twitter’s #PortraitNovember

October 31, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

First of all ‘Thanks’ to everyone who visited ‘Closer to the Art’ last Saturday in Stone, Staffordshire and came up to say ‘Hi’. So many lovely people and a great atmosphere, with four of my fourteen paintings finding new homes with a positive option on a fifth. I’ll be honest, I thought my lowest priced paintings would have been the first to go; shows what I know doesn’t it?

Oddly, even for such a modest show, I found fitting the preparation in between work and home unexpectedly tiring; I’ve been a positively bleary eyed this week – and a little listless too. So, now that ‘Closer to the Art’ is out of the way, I think a change of pace is in order.

I’ve decided I’m going to do two things. In the evenings I’m going to set about my Hulk vs Spider-man sculpture again. Bit of a long running fan-boy project this which seems to emerge when the nights get darker (its been safely tucked up in a cosy box over the summer). I find this sort of sculpt proceeds very slowly, so don’t expect any major new reveals immediately. More over the coming weeks.

During the daylight hours, when I’ve got more chance of actually being awake, I’m going to take part in the #PortraitNovember Twitter challenge. For this I’m going to build on the work I did during #DrawingAugust where I produced pen portraits of my work colleagues every day for the whole month.

One of my colleagues (pictured) has very kindly (foolishly?) offered to sit for me throughout #PortraitNovember. This time I want to use acrylics, and work larger than my original sketches. I’m hoping to paint during break times at work, and my employer has kindly given permission for me to set up easel and paints in our offices for the month. Guess I know who’ll be providing the lunchtime entertainment over the next few weeks…

My intention is to make only a quick preparatory sketch, then get straight into making a single painting. In reality I’m only going to be able to spare a couple of hours a week at most.

I’m not at all sure how well this is going to go. During #DrawingAugust the thing I found most challenging was snapping out of my analytical ‘work’ mind-set and straight into a creative state of mind. Some days were very obviously better than others! Combine that with the fact that portraiture in general is so far out of my comfort zone, this could prove interesting. Watch this space.

Hulk and Spider-man, Sculpture

Feat of clay: blocking in Hulk vs Spider-Man

August 2, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

So, with the armature complete on my Hulk vs Spider-Man, it was time to start squidging on the clay. I decided to use grey Super Sculpey Firm, a polymer clay which stays soft until permanently set in a low temperature oven. My Allosaurus was sculpted in regular ‘pink’ Super Sculpey. But I found that it was really too soft. The warmth from my fingers rendered it so soft after working it for a while it was impossible to get any decent detail.

If anyone fancies playing around with polymer clays do be aware that they’re not without health warnings, even though they are marketed heavily at kids. The plasticisers they contain, phthalates, have been linked to an increased risk of some forms of cancer following prolonged exposure. Play carefully.

If anyone’s interested here are most of the tools I use, many from Tiranti sculpting supplies. Of these the ‘spoon’ next to the brush is my weapon of choice for most of the sculpting. But frankly, if pressed, I use pretty much anything which looks useful.

In these early stages I planned to simply bulk out both figures equally, but I started with the Hulk to get the weight in there. Blocking in all the big areas roughly and getting their proportions right from the start should pay dividends later – good foundations. I knew those life classes in the eighties would pay off one day.

Sadly, my enthusiastic start suffered a few knocks. I immediately found an unforeseen problem. The clay really didn’t stick very well to Milliput epoxy putty. But after a bit of persistence I got it to work.

Another problem emerged with support for the hands. I’d deliberately left any structure off until I could see exactly where the wrist and fingers would need to end up. Unfortunately not a bright move. I had to do a fair bit of bodging to attach some thin wire onto the forearms with epoxy. Next time I’ll weave the arms out of five strands of finer wire from the get-go so I can branch the fingers wherever needed.

It was when I got onto blocking out Spider-man I knew I was in real trouble. The key position of the Hulk’s hand gripping Spidey’s ankle just wasn’t right. The Milliput core wouldn’t accommodate the correct position, it was well in the way. So out came the Dremel and I hacked back the armature with predictable results…

And so it was, inevitably, that something snapped and Spidey fell off. Bugger.

Hulk and Spider-man, Sculpture

The ties that bind: making the armature for Hulk vs Spider-Man

July 25, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

It’s been one of the hottest weeks I can remember for a long time. My reaction to the sweltering humidity has been to come home, drink and go to sleep. I did try painting but my studio is so sand-meltingly hot it’s truly unbearable. So, in the absence of my usual painty type stuff, here’s another retrospective continuing the creation of my long running Hulk vs Spider-Man sculpt.

After I made the wee maquette you saw in my last post I gathered my materials keen to get busy with the clay. But first, the pose needed a serious armature – a skeleton to stop it being all limp and floppy… (now, now; I can hear you making up your own jokes in the cheap seats…)

A quick sketch established both the scale of the Hulk and Spider-man and the positions of their major joints. This would be my guide when making the armature.

I used three gauges of annealed aluminium wire, the same type used for stop motion animation figures. This accommodating wire has the advantage that it’s had all of the ‘boing’ extracted. You bends it and it stays where you put it with no annoying spring.

Each figure had an armature made directly from the scale sketch you can see in the background. The two armatures were wedded to each other at the Hulk’s right hand and Spider-Bloke’s ankle and then bent to roughly the right pose using my little maquette as a guide.

This sculpture will have a lot of weight suspended away from the main centre of gravity so I wanted a hefty base with the figures firmly attached. I laminated two layers of MDF into a rough block, drilled two holes and bolted the Hulk’s feet to it using captive nuts epoxied into the Hulk’s feet – that’ll learn ‘im! The base will only be cut to size and shape once the whole sculpt is complete.

Feeling quite chuffed with myself I showed it to my sculptor chum Andy Bill. Now, he’s an extremely knowledgeable fella and when I asked his opinion on the finished armature he was very clear that he didn’t think it would hold. I don’t think he actually giggled, but maybe he should’ve.

So I strengthened it by covering it in a layer of Milliput epoxy resin (that’s the green stuff). This both locked it in position and made it really robust; or so I thought…

Ade Turner Art

Tag Archives: Spider-man

All primed for Twitter’s #PortraitNovember

Feat of clay: blocking in Hulk vs Spider-Man

The ties that bind: making the armature for Hulk vs Spider-Man

British Landscape Painter