Mary Poppins Update

I'm working away on this lovely piece so I decided to update. I asked the Walt Disney Archives if I could have the Mary Poppins figure back, if they weren't doing anything with her, and they graciously told me I could. I don't live too far away from the studio but it took four hours to get there and back because of holiday traffic! But the funny thing was I came home and ripped her head, legs, arms and hat off because the anatomy was all wrong. Believe it or not, the trip to get her was worth it. Starting from scratch would have taken at least a week and a half and having some time away from her I was able to recognize right away what was off with her (and a little embarrassed I gave her to Disney like that). So this is her all shiny and new with better proportions. I finished the Willow tree and I'm still working on Bert in the Chimney scene surrounded by kites because he is a jack-of-all-trades in the movie. He's a Screever, Kite Seller, Chimney Sweep and One-man Band. The hardest thing about doing these is their faces. I do major face studies of both Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (Bert's face study shown. Pencil on heavy paper) and study work done by Milt Kahl. I want people to recognize there faces in a familiar way and love them like they did the characters in the movie. I spent hours on faces for both Mary and Bert and they ended up in the trash. It's really discouraging when this happens but I keep telling myself that I have never regretted re-doing the faces of my figures so that encourages me.

Baby Grand for Grad

I was commissioned from some very good friends to do a baby grand piano for a cake top for a graduation party. It needed to be made in just two weeks so there wasn't time to do a full study of a baby grand piano so I used a free download for a paper grand piano as a reference and just omitted and added a lot of different things.
After the piano was completed I thought about what it would look like to play beautiful music. I have zero knowledge of how to play music or how to read it but I pictured the pianist being surrounded with the notes and them wrapping around her like air. I needed to wait to post it because it was a surprise.
 Mary Poppins is coming along great and Bert was so fun to do with him being covered in soot. Will post soon.