Grin And Bear It

I’m the first one to admit, Michelle did most of the heavy lifting on this week’s project, A Fozzie Bear mini-diorama that’s part of Gallery1988’s latest show, Off The Leash, a celebration of our favorite non-human characters from pop culture.

We called the piece “Wocka Wocka” and it’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while; A tribute to Fozzie the comedian. It’s a simple tableau of everyone’s favorite comedy bear, up on stage, with a microphone and some props, doing what he does best — telling jokes.

So while Michelle was busy needle felting our fuzzy friend, I set about figuring out how to make the rest of the piece. I started with the microphone (arguably, his main prop). To cut, drill, and grind the metal parts of the prop, I ended up utilizing the Dremel Workstation Michelle got me for Christmas. It’s a pretty invaluable accessory to my rotary tool and I couldn’t have finished my part of this project without it.

The grip of the mic is a piece of wood I sanded down into that slightly flared profile. Then I used my Dremel and a sphere-shaped burr to scoop out a concave bowl shape in the end. That way I could securely glue in the head, which I’d sculpted out of clay and textured with a stiff brush.

And while Michelle’s Fozzie sculpt is clearly the star of the show here, I gotta say I’m pretty proud of the stage he stands on and the props he uses. Also — little known fact — I was the one in charge of drawing the eight-hundred-or-so dots on Fozzie’s tie.

To see Fozzie and the rest of the pieces in Gallery1988’s Off The Leash exhibit, click here.

And if you’d like to see Michelle and I put together our tribute to this comedy legend, you can watch the video below.

It’s Muppetober! Yeah? So what does that mean?

Hey! During October, a lot of artsy-types do a daily challenge: ink something every day, draw something every day, and they match it to a particular theme. I’ve done it before and I’m doing it again. This year, we’re calling it Muppetober!

For every day in October, I’ll be inking a Muppet. There’s a lot to choose from, so I’m just picking some of my favorites. But I’m not inking too heavily or elaborately, because it’s more than just inking, I’m also going to try to add some watercolor on top.

Will I be able to pull it off? I don’t know. We’re 13 days in and…yeah, it’s a struggle. And it’s not necessarily the drawing and inking. That’s goes down pretty smoothly. The watercolors, they’re a bit more involved. But the real pressure? The real time suck? Michelle and I are recording my process for all of these, editing and uploading a short to YouTube every single day.

All of this is going on, of course, while we’re juggling some other projects and commissions. But we’re letting you know about this in case you need some Muppets in your life every day. Even for just one precious minute.

Here’s the link to our shorts. Have fun!

Just An Old Fashioned Muppet Song

Today is Paul Williams’ birthday. If you don’t know who he is, you’re missing out. Musician, composer, actor…Paul Williams has had a dazzling and diverse career in show business for over five decades. But for me, the most impressive achievement he ever racked up was working with The Muppets.

Williams, along with Kenny Ascher, wrote the timeless classic, Rainbow Connection, and all the other amazing songs from the first Muppet Movie. Williams also penned all the tunes from the holiday classic Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. If you’ve ever found yourself humming Barbecue at the holidays, you can thank Paul Williams. Years later, the Henson company picked him to create the songs for yet another Muppet holiday classic, The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Considering how important Williams is to the Muppets, Michelle and I decided to honor that collaboration (and his birthday) with an illustration of Williams jamming on-stage with some of our favorite Muppet musicians.

That means that he’ll be performing not only with the Frogtown Hollow Jubilee Jugband from Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas, but also the powerhouse rock band The Electric Mayhem who shook the rafters in The Muppet Movie.

He’ll also be joined by Rowlf on piano and, of course, Kermit the frog on banjo. But a performance this massive couldn’t be confined to just the paper it’s printed on. So Michelle and I decided to craft a sufficiently Muppety frame to showcase this band.

We wanted the frame to evoke the proscenium arch of the old Muppet Theatre. A throwback to vaudeville days, the Muppet stage was framed in rich, dark red wood with ornate gold accents. So Michelle and I set about finding all of the parts and pieces necessary to complete that visual.

That meant finding and painting a wooden frame and accents, right down to the seashell footlights. The overall effect when looking at the image is that you’re viewing a Muppet performance on a stage, in a classic, old-style theatre with, of course, Paul Williams front and center.

To see us put both the illustration and frame together — and to hear us gab about Paul Williams’ many artistic accomplishments for six solid minutes — you can watch the video below.

Taking A Shot At The Muppets

This week we worked on another diorama, this time for a Gallery1988 show called Idiot Box. It’s a show that celebrates television shows from 1999 on up through the present. We chose the one-season wonder, The Muppets.

This was a truly funny Muppet TV show that didn’t get a lot of viewers. The scene we recreated was from Episode 3, Bear Left Then Bear Write. Fozzie leaves the Muppets to wander through nature and write a hit comedy. But he’s felled by a park ranger’s tranquilizer dart and Kermit must come to his rescue.

This time out, Michelle felted Fozzie with wool while I sculpted Kermit with clay. And the base was a joint effort. So far it’s our favorite project that we’ve worked on together. You can see it, as well as all the other great entries in the Idiot Box show, at Gallery1988’s website.

And, as usual, if you’d like to see Michelle and I put this project together, you can watch the video down below.

Sesame Street’s Count Von Count! (My First Mini-Painting)

Most of the time, when I’m working on art, I’m either sitting behind my computer working on something digital, or sitting on the couch, sketching with a pencil. Bottom line, there’s a lot of sitting going on, and that’s not gonna change anytime soon.

But what WILL change is the medium I’m working in. I found an old mini-canvas in the ArtBin I used during my college painting class eons ago. It was still sealed in plastic because I’ve never done a mini-painting. Until now.

This week, I finally broke open some old acrylics (and that mini-canvas) and decided to try my hand at a mini-portrait of one of my favorite Muppets, Count Von Count. You can watch the video down below to see how it went, and listen to me talk to RunRedRun about Sesame Street, vampires, and my college painting course.

Anyway, here’s the video. One! One painting video! Ah Ah Ah Ahhhhh!

Inking Uncle Deadly (The Phantom of the Muppet Show)

This was a fun video to make. And not just because I got to draw one of my favorite scary muppets, Uncle Deadly.

And not just because Run Red Run and I got to talk about Muppets (which is always fun).

But this time, we’re also debuting a brand new experimental segment where SOMEONE ELSE does the inking. Have I got your curiosity piqued? Good. Watch the video and find out what I’m talking about:

Inking Muppets! Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear.

I know we usually ink monsters or villains (because they’re fun) but we’re lightening things up a touch today and inking Muppets!

Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear, up on stage, thrilling the crowd on open mic night at Chet’s Beef and Brew. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere! But you know with the talent these two have, they’re going places!

And while I ink Muppets, RunRedRun and I discuss inking, kazoos, and that one time we met a Muppeteer! I also spend most of the video trying to convince her to sing.

Plus, if you stick around ’til the end, I tossed some digital color on my inks. Here the video:

Inking (and coloring) Sesame Street Monsters

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Great. Now tell me how to get away from these creepy alien muppets.

I kid. I love these guys. But they did give me the creeps when I was five.

In this video, I ink these monsters (and maybe a surprise monster, too) and Run Red Run and I talk about Muppets and Frank Oz.