Spring Can't Get Here Soon Enough

I like to visit the beach after a storm because of the interesting things I often find washed up. In particular I am often searching for driftwood to incorporate into my work.

Unfortunately the best days for collecting aren't always the most pleasant for hiking. The bitter weather keeps many folks away from the beach. It's not uncommon to pass a blustery afternoon without seeing a soul.

Mother Nature provided me with several great pieces of wood especially a stump of driftwood that will be perfect for an owl sculpture I have planned.

When I got home I placed the wood in my kiln to begin drying it and began this little armature.

It is going to be a small King Kong battling a Pteradon. This weekend I'll finish carving the wooden skull and seal it. Then I can begin bulking out the form.

Styracosaurus Sculpture

Once I had the pelvis of the Styracosaur completed I began work on the rear legs. A small piece of brass rod was inserted in the Apoxie Sculpt clay before it cured. This would enable me to place the rod from the thigh in the hollow tube in the pelvis.

Kessler said he may have a scene in his Kong film where one of the attacking raptors perches on the body of the Styracosaurus. The feet of the raptor puppet would need to be anchored securely to the dead dinosaurs body. I reinforced the shoulder area of the Styrac armature with a block of wood to allow for this.

The Finished Skull Island Native Puppet

After the head was painted I glued it onto the aluminum wire armature with Zap A Gap glue. The next step was to hot glue foam rubber I had saved from an old mattress to the armature. When I thought it looked about right I used manicure scissors to carefully trim the foam rubber to the appropriate shape.

After test fitting the latex skin to see if it covered the foam rubber properly it was time to glue on the front and back skins. I used the same tinted liquid latex that I made the skins from to adhere them to the armature. I brushed a light coat of latex on the inner surface of the skin and the foam covered armature. Once it was dry I carefully tacked down the skins.

There was a little overlap of skin that had to be trimmed off. Then the puppet got a final thin coat of liquid latex over the seams and where the cast head joined the body.

When it came to dressing the puppet I settled on a straw like material I found at the local Arts and Crafts store. I hot glued it in place and wrapped it snugly around the waist with Dacron line. I applied Zap A Gap over the Dacron to lock it in place.

I made a cardboard template for the shields and traced them out on thin Bass wood. After sealing the wood with primer I painted them with acrylics and top coated them with Testor's Dull Cote spray. The spears were painted metal rods topped with Apoxie Clay spearheads.

Painting The King Kong Casting

I'm going to have to skim over making Kong's shoulders and attaching his head. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this stage of the work. It was pretty straight forward. I cut a piece of 1/4" plywood for the base. The shoulders were cut from the same 1/4" plywood stock. I stapled wire mesh screening over the plywood form.

I mixed up a batch of paper mache and covered the screening. After about an hours time I gently worked over the shoulders with a plastic spatula to smooth and further shape them.

Several days later after the mache had dried I coated it with Liquitex Matt Medium to seal it. Finally I covered the entire shoulder area with Apoxie Sculpt Clay giving it a fur texture and blending it up and into Kong's cast head.

The mouth and eyes were masked off and the sculpture was sprayed with gray auto primer. Next I began dry brushing on white acrylic paint where I wanted hi lites. Working light to dark I next dry brushed on light gray, followed by raw umber. When I was finished with my dry brushing I sprayed the sculpture with Krylon Matt clear spray to protect the paint.

The last step was antiquing Kong with a mix of thinned down black and raw umber acrylics. This would tie all the dry brushing work together. I worked in small sections wiping off the excess antiquing medium till I achieved the effect I was looking for.

Now came the time to begin creating the native that would be struggling in Kong's mouth. I roughed out the size native I wanted in aluminum armature wire and wound green floral wire around this to give the clay something to stick too. Here is a photo of Kong with the native armature in his mouth.