SPIRITED AWAY. NO-FACE MASK. 2022.

This is the most recent piece that I've sculpted. I know, it was two years ago, but at the moment I'm now aiming to be a bit more active and sculpt some new things, so watch out for some further updates on here and on my social media pages.

The reason I've not been so active over the past two years is just boring life stuff. I've bounced around from several different jobs and it's made things difficult to be creatively inspired. Plus a lack of funds. Materials are pretty expensive and I just couldn't justify spending the money.

Anyway, back in 2022, I really wanted to make a no-face mask, from the animated film Spirited Away. I sculpted it in ceramic clay and made a cheap latex mould of it. Not ideal, but at that time silicone was unaffordable to me, so I had to just use what I already had.

I think it turned out really nice. I sculpted some fine detail and texture onto it as I wanted to give the impression of wood-grain.

I painted it with acrylics and then gave it a couple of coats of varnish.

For the reverse side of the mask, I covered it with black felt and then attached some brass wire so that it could be hung on the wall.

DEATH NOTE. RYUK.

This was one of the last sculptures that I did during the time of  2014 - 2018. So I'm guessing that this one must have been done in 2018. I vaguely remember that I'd been watching the Death Note anime series and had enjoyed it, so I decided to do a sculpture of the character Ryuk. At that time, there had been a couple of Japanese live action films made from this too, so my sculpture was a sort of amalgam of the comic, anime, and live action versions of Ryuk. I liked different elements of each. 

I remember having trouble deciding on how to sculpt the hair and I re-started the hair several times before I was happy with it. The teeth were something else that I chose to do a little differently. Many years previously, my friend Juliette had given me some resin castings of fox teeth that she'd made. I'd kept them in my sculpting kit, but never used them on anything. So I thought it would be cool to use them on Ryuk.

I was really liking how this sculpture looked, but sadly I did not have the money to make a mould of it. It was sculpted in ceramic clay, and after leaving it wrapped up for too long, the clay went all mouldy and horrible, so I was forced to dispose of it in the bin. This is the only photo that I have of it. 

Maybe some day I'll do another one.