Yep, Another Ultraman!

Hiya folks! I know, I know, I gotta update more often, but in the months since my last Ultraman post I've been a little busy with other stuff that I couldn't share at the time, or just too lazy to make a new blog post, so just learn to live with it, alright? Alright.

So anyways, I got me a new Ultraman statue from my pal, Buddy to paint up! I'll leave out the prep stuff since I already covered that in the first blog entry, and it was exceptionally scintillating even then, I'm sure. I wanted to do something with a little more color this time, and even thought about doing a similar concept to the last one, filing the space with random unrelated images, but that's kind of a chore trying to think of weird drawings to put all over anything. Then the other night I had the kernel or an idea: I had sketched a little wooden boat and thought I'd make it the central image and build from that. I was still planning on just drawing random images all over, but larger characters so I wouldn't have to think of as many different ones.

Once I had the boat on the belly, I thought, why not put an old sea dog at the rudder? Everything started to fall into place after that, make the ocean up to the waist, sky above, sunshine on the statue's face, etc. I started out drawing a whole bunch of different birds in the sky, but then I remembered a little blackbird I had made a few sketches of a year or so ago and never did anything with, I thought I'd use him!

I was making the placement of the birds semi-symmetrical and then thought, why not make 24, like in the old nursery rhyme, so 24 it is! And if we're gonna reference the old nursery rhyme, why not a pie to go with it?

For the legs I had thought about making 24 fish that were reminiscent of the bird shape and doing a similar symmetrical style with them, but trashed that and decided to go with tentacles reaching up from the depths!

Finally, I added a couple of weird squid-like eyes on the toes, so other than a few minor additions and some refinements here and there, we're set to paint! But that will have to wait for the next entry. I hope you're all doing well!

Son of Ultraman!

Hey everybody! Here's the final process post about our old pal Ultraman! When last we left our daring hero, he had been covered in white charcoal drawings by the dastardly villain Benny Bladerunner. Will he escape unscathed? Is this the end of Ultraman? Yep, it is.

So, after all the sketching and erasing and sketching again, it's finally time to paint. I decided to lay him down on my dining room table where I do most of my painting so I could change my angle of approach a little easier. This position would hopefully make it easier to get the paintbrush into the tight spots like under his arms and between the thighs.

 I had still been undecided about what color to do the line work in, white or black, but after a little debate and a couple of Photoshop tests, white won the day. In the tests, white had stood out against the background so much better than the black and we wanted him to STAND OUT! With Ultraman laid out and completely at my mercy, I begin! I started off on his belly and the heart and the flames that spread across his chest...

Crotch shark!

 

The potted cactus is actually one of my favorite things on him!

Reminds me of that cartoon "Chowder"...

Workin' on the Chucks.

So after getting the front side done and reaching around the sides as far as I could, it was time to flip him over and do the back.

 

Cactus - Now with added spines!

Time to wrap this painting up!

Pretty much finished!

 

Long leggedy teapot...

 

A few things were changed or tightened up on the fly, and I revamped the face one more time, getting rid of the glasses and buck teeth I had sketched out, but leaving the handlebar mustache. I decided to just add shapes to his face to fill the space.

After all the painting on the statue was done,  it was finally time to turn my attention to the display stand. After priming it, I sprayed it all over with a few coats of black spray paint.

The rod sticking up slides into the bottom of the statue's right foot for support.

After the spray paint was dry, I traced the words "Mellow Mushroom" on the front of the base, and a peace sign on top. I then used a white paint pen to freehand maze-like designs all over the base. The only guides I had were the letters and the peace sign. There were a couple of spots that my hand got away from me a little bit, but all in all, I think it turned out nice.

After all of the painting was finished, I loaded up the statue and the base in my Blazer and took them back down to my Mom's shop in my parents' backyard. Once again, instead of standing him up to varnish, I laid him on a table, sprayed one side and let it dry for 24 hours, then flipped him and did the same to the other side. This way I would more easily be able to spray the hard to reach or easily overlooked spots like on the top of his head and under the forearms. And finally, after all of the varnish was dry, here's how he looked!

Well that's it! Now that this project is all over and my newest project is kinda hush hush, I'm not sure when I'll update again, but I'll try to make sure that I post something at least as often as I've been posting these Ultraman WIPs. And there could be an all new different statue coming my way soon too! Hope you're all doing well!

Happy trails from Ultraman and your old pal Benny!