Feeling Bookish

It's been a really busy but a brilliant week. I gave my first interview / feature for a Russian magazine ('The Art of Miniatures'), sold a lot of Halloween themed miniatures to collectors worldwide and started on a commission for a Sorcerer's library. The miniature cookbooks I had made a month ago (but never bothered to mention on this blog) created some hype and I was asked to make leather-bound spellbooks (or 'dragonskin' books) and a library to house them. See the cookbooks at the end of this post.

Here are some fun photos of it all in-the-making.

I also got a great new toy to use to help me work with leather (see photo). The books shown here are less than 3/4" in height. The fireplace you see below was wooden (I have made fireplaces before, such as the one used in the Christmas 2012 magazine feature) but this one I acquired in unfinished wood and I painted it to resemble green marble.



Now I better get a move on... doing another magazine cover and the deadline looms... ;)

Something wicked this way comes

Had a great weekend here in Los Feliz, working very little on miniatures for a change. The annual street fair arrived on Hillhurst Ave and I braved the 102 degree weather to meet many brilliant artisans and restaurateurs with stands in the throngs of the madding crowd of hipsters and micro dog owners.

Last Friday I took these pictures as part of some Halloween 2013 promotion. One of the images will be making its way into a Russian magazine I am featured in next month. I was thrilled to be asked - being 1/8 Russian and loving so much about Russian culture. I'll share the article on here when I get a copy.
Until then I leave you with pumpkins 12 times smaller than real life...

Keeping the Company of Hags and Crones

Another update so soon? This was how I intended to write my blog when I first started it and finally I am having time to work, blog, work, blog and move at the pace I intended!

So today's progress - another witch of the gardening variety - Petunia Ditchwater.
I stood these witches on an existing set which I have out at the moment as it's being photographed for a magazine (the set not the witches!). These are just quick snaps... not studio lit or anything. It's 92 degrees outside and wonderful warm sunlight was flooding all over that set, so that's why I popped them on it.

I'm not in love with the design but as these first witches are very much background characters in 'Myrtle the Witch' it doesn't matter a great deal that I didn't achieve a particularly satisfying result. Besides if there's time I'll re-conceive and re-do.

More characters and sets to come. Big thanks to everyone who has clicked over to the Facebook page to 'like' and those that joined this blog in order to follow my progress and be involved.

A Spoonful of Crocodile

A background character for the film 'Myrtle the Witch' is now completed. Her character - Gertrude Nettlebed - spends a lot of time gardening (spreading weeds, growing mugwort, mandrake, and digging up flowers) and also rearing crocodiles. She spends time in the company of like-minded brown-fingered witches. Yesterday I finished her and made a baby crocodile for her.

Here are some photos. Thank you for taking an interest in 'Myrtle the Witch' and following the progress as it is made. 'Like' us on Facebook and feel free to comment with suggestions / thoughts / criticism on any of the photos uploaded to that page. The production stage of the film will ultimately be crowd funded, so get involved with pre-production as well, by all means!

Breakfast in the Twilight Zone

I adore Rod Serling, and the following statement kept coming to mind as I was working on this contemporary 'retro' kitchen with a dragon egg fry-up in progress...

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

—Rod Serling

I mentioned that I was working on this miniature scale set in my previous post and now that it's finished, photographed and photos have been given to the editor for print, I'm sharing a few images here.

Scroll past the kitchen with frying dragon eggs and see what I was working on yesterday - characters (including Gertrude Nettlebed and Petunia Ditchwater) for the short film 'Myrtle the Witch'. They're very much unfinished - this is just a snapshot of them in progress (by popular request!)

Find updates on the Tall Tales Productions Facebook page as well.

Heads Up!

Yesterday I started sculpting a background character for short film - 'Myrtle the Witch'. Gertrude Nettlebed. She's one of the typically 'bad' witches. In this miniature world 'there are good witches, there are bad witches... and then there's Myrtle'.

I just quickly did her head and arms and will make the rest of her today *if* I have time. Annoyingly other jobs consistently take up my time. I've got two fairly big deadlines tomorrow and am also meant to shoot my finished thatched cottage for a magazine.

Last week I was taken away from 'Myrtle the Witch' by a commissioned scale miniature retro kitchen - for the modern witch. For fun I just thought I'd share some work-in-progress photos of that project too. It's one inch scale, a lot of the furniture was built by me out of basswood... walls paneled by me etc etc - you know the rest! It's not finished of course - I'll share some finished photos as well when that's all wrapped up. Don't forget to find Tall Tales on Facebook for updates there as well. :)

Enjoy the rest of Labor Day weekend (my American friends at any rate!)...