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De/Refacing a Volks LE

De/Refacing a Volks LE published on 4 Comments on De/Refacing a Volks LE

I worked on Frank last night. For those of you curious about my creative process, I’m afraid it’s much more haphazard and much less visionary than you would hope. Motivated by a combination of extreme impatience and only slightly-above-average artistic talent, I cannot precisely replicate the exciting ideas teeming in my brain. Therefore I strive to reproduce the spirit of a likeness, the essence of the character because all its particular details cannot fully translate between my synapses and my hands.

In practice, this means I was drawing last night directly on the resin without having treated it first. The scribbling above represents Prismacolor Dark Brown Fonce [PC947] for eye-liner and eyebrows, Tuscan Red [PC 937] for the lip liner and some red chalk pastel to fill in the lips. You can’t see it, but I used a little red pastel on the insides of the eyes and a mixture of brown and black pastel in the creases of the mouth. Read the rest of the story below.

Not being that high-tech, I just applied the Prismacolor directly from the pencils, making sure that they were ultra-sharp. Pointy pencils allow me much more control than acrylic paints. I have an ambivalent relationship with acrylics. They never behave well enough for me, probably because I lay them on too thickly and then become exasperated when they slide. Prismacolors adhere much better to resin, with finer control over color application, greater blending and a smoother finish.

I applied the pastels by powdering some of them, then dipping a dry brush into the powder and brushing it on the resin. [Thank you to Armeleia for the tip about the DRY brush.] As you can see, the pastels don’t stick very deeply to uncoated resin, so I went over the pastels with Prismacolor Rouge Cramoisi [PC924] later. Here’s Frank currently catching the spirit of my likeness, if not the letter:

And here’s my second mock-up of what he will look like with eyes and hair. Naturally, there will be more make-up involved, but I just wanted to get a sense of the completed project. While it is uncompleted, I must say that I like the way it’s coming along. The artificially arched eyebrows and the luscious, smirking mouth give him an amused and welcoming expression that I find very endearing.

4 Comments

Thanks for your comments, guys. I really like the way that the lips turned out. The eyebrows should be heavier, so I’ll have to work on that. I’m aware that the eyebrows, along with all of my work, is asymmetrical, but I think it’s going well.

–MW

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