The Shaun in the City Bristol trail is now well under way! 70 giant sculptures of Shaun the Sheep created by by a host of artists, designers and celebrities have been set free in locations around the city, and they'll be there until August 31st... if you're in Bristol you will have no doubt spotted some! At the end of the trail, the sculptures will go to auction, along with the additional 50 Shauns that formed a London trail earlier in the year - all to raise money for children in hospitals across the UK. For more information, and to keep updated on the latest sheep related news, please visit the Shaun in the City website
I was fortunate enough to have been selected to create 2 Shauns for the trail, which I worked on in November last year, and the second one a few months back in February. I've put together a couple of 'photo-stories' to document the process of each one.
First up, 'Fab-ewe-lous' ...an ice-cream themed Shaun. I have worked on a few of these kinds of projects now, but have found that each design presents its own challenges. With this one it was the addition of the 'hundreds & thousands' to his back end, not sure why I didn't realise they were going to take ages! Anyway, please scroll down to see the process of how the design evolved from the initial blank sculpture.
Also to note, when I submitted the design I had fully expected to have had to build on the super-whipped hairdo & flake myself, very kindly though the good folks involved with making the sculptures took care of that for me - so thanks very much to them for that!
Next up 'Flock 'n Roll'... a Union Jack themed sheep, but with his glittery fleece and badges, it's obvious he likes to Rock!
The process for this design involved making giant button badges to attach to the sculpture. I built up areas on the undulating fleece so that the badges had a flatter surface to sit on. Once they were in place and I had filled and painted around them, I wasn't happy with the way the areas merged into the original sculpture... So there was quite a lot of work in repeated remodelling and sanding back, until the transition between my additions and the original sculpture weren't so apparent. Also, you can take my word for it that he does have a slightly glittery appearance to his fleece, which can be seen in reality (just not in the photos!) - For this I added numerous coats of red, white and blue metal flake in clear varnish over the top of the painted fleece, hair and on his hoof 'nail art'.
Once finished both sculptures went off to be lacquered, so they now have a lovely high-gloss finish.
For the duration of the trail (until 31st August, 2015) Fab-ewe-lous can be found outside The Mall at Cribbs Causeway and Flock 'n Roll outside the Victoria Rooms in Clifton.
Thanks very much to the two sponsors of my Shauns - The Mall at Cribbs Causeway and University of Bristol
To see features on these 2 completed Shauns and some other similar projects I have previously worked on, please visit the art projects section of my website
Following on from my involvement with Shaun in the City, I had the pleasure of working with 12 children from Henleaze Junior School, to create their Bristol 2015, European Green Capital inspired 'Super Shaun'! For more about this, click here
And as final sign off... a little 360° animation of a finished 'Fab-ewe-lous' at the painting space (before he went off to be lacquered) accompanied by a suitable theme tune...