SHAWK !

Yes, it's October. An absolute favorite time of the year for me. It is October, and Halloween is very near; belly crawling like a wraith on it's skeletal fingers and toes, and I've not even set out any decorations; nor have I carved a pumpkin, smoked out my house with a fog machine, chosen a costume or anything like that. But I did manage to finish painting a Shock Monster bust, and that somehow makes it all alright...

There's just something about that face. He's damn ugly, and from the look of it, he might be willing to see what you taste like; but I'll bet he only wants to play. He looks too stupid to want to do any real harm, intentionally. I'm sure he'd play a little rough or drool a glob of rotten lung tissue on you while giving you a Dutch Rub, but other than that I'll bet he's a great guy.

The Shock Monster (originally titled "Horror Zombie") was illustrated by Keith Ward, also responsible to the illustration of the Elmer's bull. Shock Monster was originally seen in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine advertisements as a latex mask from the Topstone company in the late 1950's.






He's still here today, and he's been hanging out on my lazy susan, compliments of sculptor Casey Love.


Casey Love released this piece in late 2009 if memory serves me correctly. There were some really cool life-sized, latex displays of the Shock Monster, but what I wanted was a smaller, resin bust, and this piece was perfect for me. I did some custom work to the mouth in reshaping the teeth; grinding a few out and deepening the mouth so that I could insert a nice, fat tongue.





The head was sculpted without hair so one can replicate the near dreadlocked, shocked-out mop this creep is famous for. Casey sent along a small amount of charcoal gray crepe hair, which I mixed in with some dark brown and black wig hair I had stashed away.

So, for securing hair to the head I've always used Liquitex Matte Medium as an adhesive in the past, and I started out using it on this project, but it dries very slowly and also left the hair looking really rigid. I needed something that would dry much faster and also allow for some flex when it came time to style it. Rubber cement, Elmers, (with the bull ;), did the trick. When I finished applying the result made me think of a mix between King Buzzo (The Melvins) and Todd Trainer (Shellac):









A little Green, snip-snip, styling mousse and blah-blah-blah...he's done. I absolutely had to have it finished before Halloween. So after the photo shoot I'm gonna' sit him on a t.v. tray next to me, offer him a Pabst and we'll watch Dawn of the Dead together. Have a kick-ass Halloween this year, Ladies and Germs!

Spiderzero Priest, Unstained

Spiderzero: Priest. From the moment I saw it, I felt a dark, beckoning to the piece, and I had to have it right away. Here are some photos of the bust assembled and primed, along with the strange bonus companion piece that sculptor Simon Lee released with the first ten pre-orders of the bust.

Ol' Scratch, by the Shiflett Brothers

I've been spending time with this Fella after work for about forty five minutes each day; four days a week for three weeks, and he's finished. My original plan was to blast through it in one week, but that didn't happen. I had read something really inspiring on a forum about pushing ones self to do work quickly and being satisfied with it, and then moving onward. I believe in that, but it just didn't work with my schedule. Hell, he's done regardless. And I'm happy with what I've done with it.

The Shiflett brothers, Jarrod and Brandon...I don't know where to start. For those who already know 'em, you most likely dig them as people and artists, because they're down to Earth, and talented visionaries. Their style is very unique, and it helps to approach painting one of their pieces with a divergent hand as well.

I wasn't sure where I'd take this piece, but I realized after a few sessions that I was going to use really dull, septic Earth tones on the figure. I also wanted him to have these burning eyes that sear and drip with Hell, and I actually wanted to paint lava like drips trailing down his chest, but after a test I realized it was way too distracting, so I backed off. The base had me stumped all the way through, but finally at the very end I decided to paint it with some spectral blues and greens.

I loved working with this piece. The anatomy is a real statement to how well the Brothers understand a muscular body and subtle contrapposto (thanks Norman). A powerful piece all the way, so happy I got this bad boy in my Detolf already.