Buzzing Behind the Scenes, part 1

I've wanted to blog about my Buster the Bee watercolor and sculpture for quite some time. And here it is! My Buster pieces have been one of my favorites in my storybook line.

This is my watercolor with Buster the Bee delivering some honey tea with Oliver the Ant guiding him to Toby's turtle shell. Ever since I started making my storybook sculptures, I've wanted to make this watercolor into a sculpture. Last year I had a small art exhibit at a gallary inside of a local public library. I wanted to make this piece for last year's show. With lots of patience and determination, I got this piece done for the show. There are a lot of parts to this sculpture, so this will be the first installment in a four part series.

Here is my sculpture about midway into sculpting it. I love flowers and I was excited to make a field of flowers for Buster to buzz over. I got some books about flowers from the library to find a variety of flowers to sculpt.

The photo above shows some of the leaves and flowers for my piece.

And here are the meticulous wings for Buster. I painstakingly glued each piece of wire to form the wings. And needless to say it was with much trial and error. The following photo attests to the fact, that these wings were not made in a day or two.

A selection of trial and error wings, which I will not depart with. These wings are part of my "mistake/reject" collection. Am I a pack rat? Keeping my mistake pieces can be a helpful guide for the future. Although, if I'd make another bee sculpture, I would try to find a new way to make the wings. They were one of the hardest parts to make along with being the most delicate to handle.

And here's the final photo for part one. Buster is already flying (albeit wingless) amongst the flowers waiting to be painted. The next part of this series will feature some of the smaller details of my piece, such as the picinic basket and tea pot, Buster will be carrying to Toby's shell. Stay tuned, for part 2 of Buzzing Behind the Scenes.

A Tuba Playin' Frog has Hopped into My Blog!

Frankie the Frog hopped into my blog to show you how he started out as a watercolor storybook character into a 3-D sculpture. He wants all of his fellow 2-D storybook characters to be inspired by his story of transforming from 2-D to 3-D. Enjoy his inspiring story of transformation!



Welcome to the Lilly Bug Blog! I am Frankie the Frog, here to share my story about emerging into 3-D from the pages of Christine's watercolors. Please feel free to leave your inspiring stories and comments here, we love to hear from you.

One day while Christine was in college, she was working on a series of watercolors for a storybook idea of hers. She worked on some sketches of some musicians practicing for an upcoming surprise birthday party. One of those musicians happened to be me, Frankie the Frog, playing my tuba with my cheeks puffed out, as I put my all into my musical talents.



From the sketch, came the watercolor and after a strong desire to make her storybook characters into a sculptures, Christine was signed up for Sculpture II the following semester. During her first week of sculpture class, she was introduced to a sculpting medium called, Apoxie Sculpt. Things would never be the same from then on.




Christine learned how to make an under-structure to support her Apoxie Sculpt pieces. She used one of her original sketches of me as an aid to shape a wire support as the foundation for my body.



After the wire under-structure was formed, Christine began to use a variety of materials to fill in volume for the shape of my froggy physique. Examples of some of the materials used were, masking tape, string and foil.



And once the layers of those materials were completed, Christine, mixed together the Apoxie Sculpt to cover over all of the volume making materials, so eventually my shape and character came into being.



The photo above shows one of the first layers of Apoxie Sculpt covering the under-structure. Upon looking in the photo archives, Christine could not find very many photos of the Apoxie Sculpt layering/sculpting process of my tuba playin' self. After the first Apoxie layer, came others to give me my own uniqueness, or Frankie-ness, as I like to call it. Once the Apoxie Sculpting was completed, Christine got her handy Dremel power tool to help clean up areas and further define my exterior. No worries, the Dremeling did not cause me an ounce of pain.



After all of the sculpting, sanding, and Dremeling was done, I in all my Frankie-ness, appeared in 3-D, albeit in a neutral gray color. Coming up in the next post, you will see me in living color. Don't miss it!