"The Deity Reveals Itself"

"The Deity Reveals Itself"

I haven't created any art in awhile. This idea has been in my head for some time and Halloween seemed like a perfect time for this piece. I am not a trained artist, I just work on intuition and crazy ideas. The ideas don't always work out and often the art evolves as I progress.

I call it "The Deity Reveals Itself". Like it had a costume on and took its mask off to reveal the demon.

BACKGROUND AND HOW IT EVOLVED:
This is a heavy outdoor concrete statue that was given to me by a collector friend. The original statue is an African American boy with a fishing pole. As years passed, the pole is long gone and it had many layers of paint making him a white boy. His face is greatly deteriorated from years of weather.

THE BEGINNING:
My first idea was to strip the paint and restore him to original. There was lots of structural cracks and lost material. As I looked at his face I saw a zombie look. I had the idea of adding a child mask so you could see his rotted evil looking eyes. I only used materials that I had on hand, other than the mask I bought.

As I started to work on this piece I really threw everything and the kitchen sink at it! First starting with blue and red colored pencils, using spray paint and stain mixed as a brush on, spray paint splatter, wood stain to darken areas, clear coat, reflective clear coat, black and red sharpies, a paint thinner brush on that I ignited to give a burned effect and finally furniture polish.

FAILED IDEAS:
One idea that failed miserably.. I created a stencil that said, "evil". I wanted to spray this and the eyes in a reflective clear, so when the light hit it, the words would appear and eyes would glow. The reflective clear just did not work very good, so I abandoned that idea.

WHY? OUCH!
I had the idea to use barbed wire. I bought a small roll and used green, red and black spray paint all at once to create a rust patina. I can tell you trying to wrap real barbed wire sucks! And of course I started the project in my basement workshop, so I had to eventually pick the heavy piece up and move it to my garage with the pointy barbed wire.

The main body I wanted to look cartoonish, because the idea was a boy dressed in a costume then revealing the real demon. I really worked on the face, using shadowing and highlights. The clear coat gave it a muted look, so after I used furniture polish in select areas, I melted it with a heat gun. I just made up that technique and it gave the effect I was looking for. Looks like fresh bloody wounds! I had the spikes left over from a project on my classic truck. I used a mortar drill to create divots and super glued the screws into those for the spikes. After I clear and splatter painted the spikes I used some paint thinner to just clean the tip of each spike so it looked shiny.

Hope you like it..