Harlequins creation

This blog is to explain the events that led up to and during the creation of this significant work of art, the harlequin.  She is significant not only due to her humble beginnings, borne out of sheer inspiration in a moment I just happened to be video taping, my butt was freezing from a frozen bench near Central Park close to Columbus Circle.  I saw these lottery tickets and decided to personify disappointment, the figure eventually turned out to be less of such a deity, but definitely wears ruminants of the pattern on the scratch-off ticket. 

And so I began, I knew I wanted a few things right off the bat, they were to have a completely hand-made figure which means no face molds or hand molds (commonly used not due to talentlessness, but due to the time consuming work of making faces and hands from scratch) so that she would be one of a kind forever;  I wanted her smiling;  I wanted her to have breasts a certain way, hard to explain but I wanted them to point outward and be somewhat sagging, or hanging lower than usual... not idealized and more oval than round; and I wanted her to have a protruding stomach, I do not like flat tummies in my figures, i feel they are board-like and I hate them, roundness is safe and flowing.

Beginning with the face, I created a very simple face by just putting pieces of clay on where i wanted the mouth to protrude, the nose to come out, and the cheeks (since she is smiling) to be.






Blending in the clay and shaping the mouth with a needle tool, I then gave her some large flaring nostrils.


As for the body, besides what I already mentioned, I also wanted long limbs, I love elongated figures limbs for the human norm does not work well for me with my sculptures, making them seem too stubby... looking back on my figures from the past, many were bulky and stubby, I choose to have very long legs and arms, it gives the figures a flow, the large hands give gesture where there once was none.

Just the belly and breasts I wanted.

Sometimes I contort the figures, I have learned that this keeps the static forced poses at bay, and delivers motion. 


Baked, blue, and lots of hair!  Corkscrew is my favorite, some critics recently complained to me about it, stating that not everyone has this type of hair, but its all about texture, for without it the interesting shadows and roughness would go flat.
I began painting on the diamonds, altered forms of the squares on the scratch-offs seen in the photos.


Becoming somewhat scale-like, the figures pattern flows down and over, I stopped when I felt enough was covered aesthetically, i could have completely covered the figure or hardly at all.

The finished work of at, she took a lot of time, ideas, thinking and brainstorming, but was well worth the wait, she is only one of what will become a series of harlequins.