It never fails, every time I hear or think of the word Devilman I invariably drift to the White Zombie song, "Super Charger Heaven" with it's chorus, " Devilman, Devilman - calling. Devilman- runnin' in my head, YEAH!"
Well at long last, I finally assembled and painted a Max Factory Devilman kit. Had I not been commissioned to paint this piece, it's very likely that I wouldn't have painted one for myself. With all of it's lovely detail, the sculpture is quite intimidating to me. It may have been at Wonderfest earlier this spring when Brandon Shiflett and I were getting hammered as nails drunk, talking kits, Danzig and Art in general; he asked me if I would paint this kit for him. It had been many years since I'd last painted a Takayuki Takeya piece, so I said, "Fuck yes I will, man." To coin Charlie Sheen- the thought rollin' through my head was, " Winning..." Yes, I just did that.
The only direction I got from Brandon was that he really wanted to see some magenta tones, the rest was for me to work out. So I went in there with the magenta and purple tones, then accented with rusty oranges gold. It feels great to get the poison out with this; painting this beautiful piece was a tremendous release.
I've been inspired beyond description by this band, and I'm very much looking forward to the release of their sixth studio album release, " The Hunter". The new album is scheduled to be released on September 27 of this year, and the band has released a track for rabid fans, like myself, to enjoy titled, "Black Tongue". The video for Black Tongue features artist AJ Fosik sculpting the piece that adorns the cover of the bands new album.
Black Tongue Video:
It's always the smallest pieces that provide me with the most fret and indecision. I feel that since they're small, I need to make the very most of the piece. King Thalidomidas.
I'm not totally sure what happened to this Fella. Artists Paul Komoda and Norman Meyers laid out a story that explains the life story of this mysterious thalidomide sailor. And speaking of thalidomide, it wasn't until after weeks and weeks of frustratingly trying to make sense of the name, and I found the answer in the most unlikely of places: listening to the Howard Stern satellite radio show. So we have a man who's an unfortunate product of his mother's indulgence of a pill to relieve morning sickness, and he's half the man that he would've been. But don't be mistaken! From what I've heard from Norman, King Thalidomidas was quite the man indeed!
Even though it is a small piece, Paul passionately blessed the King with a lovely organic pasture of convoluted, and tumor-fattened skin. Paul Komoda truly is one of the most interesting and curiously talented artist living today; everything he produces speaks of it.
Since this piece was a commission, my client and I had discussed quite a few different ways to approach painting him. But in the end, the "less is more" approach prevailed, as it often does in my experience in painting. Oh, and if you're curious about the illustrious history of King Thalidomidas, follow this link to Artist Proof Studio's blog and see what Paul and Norman have to say about him. Artist Proof Studio Blog
Heyy-ooooo... how ya' doing everybody?
Couldn't help it, been listening to Howard Stern all day and it's stuck in my head.
I'm just getting back into the swing of things after having been at Wonderfest in Louisville, KY all weekend with my good friends. Back to reality. And trust me, all my experiences at Wonderfest with my friends aren't the way things are in reality, it's always very wild and crazy. But it was a damn good time indeed. The week and a half leading up to Wonderfest, I spent most evenings painting the new FalcignoArt piece, 'Howard's Nightmare'. It's a 1/1 scale resin wall or vertical mounted piece.
Here it is in sculptor Mike Falcigno's own words:
" Really, I was a bit nervous to drop this on everyone because it's NOT a straight up version of any one HPL creature. But, considering his writings always talk about beings too strange to be described by humans...it seemed safe to just create my own sculptural amalgamation of his various themes. For the record, my little back-story-( in a highly shortened version) goes like this: the screaming visage we are seeing here is a wayward traveler, and outsider that gets courted by a young lady (nubile of course!) to her shoreline mansion...only to be used as an unwilling sacrifice by the woman and her fellow townsfolk (an evil religious sect, as all small towns in New England secretly have!). So what you see here is the traveler (or what's left of him) after being strapped down into an elaborate ceremonial restraint apparatus. He gets tipped forward slightly, hanging over some sacred runes carved on the floor of the house, while the cult members chant and conjure a Lovecraftian beast from the "other side". The beast of course manifests itself into our dimension THROUGH the human host... quite literally I may add! "I really enjoy most anything Lovecraftian, as they say, or inspired my H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Coupled with my friendship with Mike, I was happy to paint this great piece. It was molded and cast by Scott Whitworth, and a fantastic job he did, because cleanup was very quick which was nice, because I didn't have a lot of time to finish it up in time for Mike to display at the Wonderfest show.
Looking at the piece now after it's finished, I would've liked to add more color variations to the head dress, if you will. But at the time I was working on it, I felt like going in with too many contrasting elements to accent that area would detract from that terrible yawning visage, and that's where the action is at! Choosing to paint the teeth dark is odd, I know, but I did paint them to be light at first, and they didn't look right to me. They stood out far too much. Besides, I convinced myself that this otherworldly creature was bustin' through, and absorbing the hosts fluids, replacing it's own; which to me should be dark blueish black, like the ink of a cephalopod.
I applaud Mike for taking on this bizarre and outre subject matter. He did an excellent job designing and sculpting this one, and to see more of Mike's work, see his website at: falcignoart.com
