Last but not least is the party dude.

I was thinking it would be funny if Mikey was a painted turtle (thus the lines up and down his neck and arm), I was also thinking it would be cool if he was the only one of the turtles who could actually retreat into his shell (perhaps explaining his fearlessness).  And of course I had to include the pizza in there too.

The cool but rude one.

I am really not a fan of the newer incarnations of Raphael, especially in that new TMNT 3D movie.  He was so very emo.  I wanted to scream at the writers for that fight scene between him and Leo.

Instead I like the idea of Raph behaving more like one of the old muscle-head 80s action stars; fearless, lumbering, and kind of a dick.  He could even spout a few one-liners.  I actually based the pose off of a picture of Rambo.

The one that does machine.

For Donatello I was thinking of him as being more of a tortoise.  A slower, wiser testudine.  I also liked the idea of his color scheme being more muted, perhaps cause he spends so much time in front of the computer instead of out in the sun.

Time for a game of blogging catch-up.  I finished the fearsome fighting four about two months ago, but haven’t updated my blog since then.

A large watercolor paper cutout that I started in September last year.  It was meant to be my winter project, and I finished it the week before my work season started again.

I originally drew the whole thing out on paper and colored it digitally to get an idea of the dimensions and color scheme (at this point I also removed a couple of elements that I didn’t like).

After deciding on a color scheme I started painting the blocks of color to cut out.  I tried to use a variety of different colors and textures, trying my hand at using sponges, rubbing alcohol, and salt with the paints.

After painting the blocks of the next step is cutting out and pasting together the different shapes of paper.  I kept track of all the colors by labeling a printout of the drawing.

Jump ahead in time, 5 months into the future, and I finally finished cutting out and pasting together the figure and the inside background.  Now it’s time to build the box.

The dimensions of the shadowbox are 22 inches tall, 15 inches wide, and 8 inches deep.

Then it was just an issue of putting the whole thing together.  I started by putting a sheet of plexiglass in the front so I wouldn’t have to worry about dust in the future (after shattering the original piece of glass that I had purchased), so the whole thing had to be installed from the back.  I had to run a heavy wire up the back of the Treebeard figure to make sure that he stood in place (a problem I didn’t foresee in the sketching phase).  I panicked a bit when I realized that the figure was way too wobbly to stand on his own.  On the back of the frame I stretched a piece of painted freezer paper to allow the light through, and mounted a fluorescent bulb behind it as a light source.

After finishing the inside of the box I cut out the decorations for the frame and had them laminated at a local copy shop.  Once again I did this so that I wouldn’t have to worry about dust, or about getting the thing wet (which would be catastrophic).

Time frame to completion:  Original sketch started on September 9th, 2009- Completed on May 6th, 2010.  That’s just shy of 8 months.

A continuation of my tiki monsters series.

When someone suggested this character I wasn’t really sure how I was going to do it, but I enjoy the way that some of the tiki elements worked so naturally.