PolarBearProject

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This is Seemore, a nine foot fiberglas polar bear.
(He is also a bench -- see?)
I spent the month of August (and a little of September)
on my front porch painting him for the
AbZOOlutely Chestnut Hill Community project.

Here's a view of his backside.

Here's a view of Seemore peacefully seating two growling teenagers --
you can see how big he is!

Getting ready to work -- sketches taped on the door...

...and paints in a line

(this is the last time things will appear to be organized...)

Seemore's sponsor is the Eye Institute

of the Philadelphia College of Optometry.

These nice folks named him

(get it? See more? Very punny, n'est-ce pas?)

and they asked that his decoration feature

things relating to vision.

My idea was to create a whimsical world

where there are many odd things to look for,

including lots of eyeballs and spectacles.

So -- "See What You Can Find" is the theme.

Here the SWYCF logo is ready to

be transferred onto Seemore

Here's the logo inked in on Seemore

Logo is finished!

I made a little sketchbook for ideas for little scenes and vignettes.

Here are some of the sketches.

So now it's time to start drawing on that bear...

Now I've added some inkline.

Close up of inkline on "The City"

Starting to paint!
Behold: my upsidedown studio assistant --

Alice is channeling Michelangelo, sort of.
This project required a LOT of physical contortions.
And a lot of ibuprofen for me.

Starting to be a technicolor polar bear...

Now it's late August, and thanks to Hurricane Ernesto,
it was a loooong week working in rain and cold.

It was tough going -- the paint took forever to dry,

the inkline wouldn't "stick,"

and I had to wear gloves (with the fingers cut out!)

because my hands got so cold.

Luckily Seemore is waterproof.

Landscape is getting filled in now.

I have to save the seat area for the very last --

because I have to sit on it to be able to work!

Also it has a lot of little paint splatters on it from working above --

nice to know acrylic paint will cover all those little splurps.

As things progressed, I started going straight from pencil to paint.
Did the inkline after all the painting details were in.
The lovely and talented young artist Alice was an ENORMOUS help.
We painted together for hours
and listened to audiobooks by Terry Pratchett:
Going Postal, Hogfather, and Sourcery.
(When Alice wasn't there, I listened to Vanity Fair by Thackeray
and In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson.)

I used more than fifty Fine Point Sharpie markers
to do the black outlines on figures.
Because I was drawing on top of acrylic paint,
the points of the markers would quickly get "burnished" and stop working.
I'd have to scribble on white paper
to get 'em going again.

scribble papers