Halloween Mask Association - Ghastly Thoughts with Jeff Wehenkel

Ghastly Thoughts, Start transmission...

Hi, my name is Jeff, Ghastly Jeff, and I make Monsters. When Eric, asked me to do this blog, I thought he was crazy. I mean really? Me? I mean I’m not anyone famous or even that you have probably heard of, but the more I thought about it I thought, why not. So let’s look at what I do, come on…

Well it’s the middle of October and I am working on a few things congruently. A few new masks that I want to make for myself, and a life-sized bust of Christopher Lee as Dracula. My work day generally starts with a bus ride through San Francisco down to my shop space in the Mission. Beautiful city San Francisco, and the transit system is very good, you really don’t need to walk very far to get a bus to wherever you need to go in the city. The bus itself is an experience that I will go into in another post. This morning, nothing really crazy to report (an anomaly).

The last bit I need to do on Dracula is the sides where his shoulders would be if I were doing shoulders. Since this will be a resin model kit ultimately, I had to sculpt in his clothing, and I want to sculpt some sort of an architectural element to tie the movie into to the bust. I’m thinking about it after I get off of the bus, I have a 3 block walk to my shop space which is located in a building complex called Activspace. Activspace is a collection of rental units marketed to artists or small business startups. I have a collection of Tattoo artists, skin care specialists and hair dressers around me, so when my door is open in the nice weather I get a lot of lookers checking out the monsters on the walls. I tend to get the occasional “what is all this for”, or “do you work in movies?” I wish…

So something architectural, I think maybe a gothic style archway with some stone work behind. I get some clay warming and sketch out what I’m thinking. I’m working in oil based clay (Chevant NSP medium ) I usually like to do most sculptures in water based clay. I feel like I can really fly along and build up a form pretty quickly in water based clay without the need to warm a bit of clay in the microwave at a time.

This sculpture needs to be shipped to New York, so I’m using the hardest clay that I am comfortable working with. After an hour or so, I have a pretty good rough out of my design so I move to the other shoulder to get the other side to the same point. A few hours later and both sides are just about done, I think one more day of working the hair and getting my angles all sharp, and making sure it looks good from all sides and I’ll be ready to send it on out.

When I get up from the chair that I’ve been sitting in for 5 hours, my back goes into a fit. OH, wow, when I am really into it, 5 hours will feel like 20 minutes, and I really should have moved around more. I forget sometimes that I am an old man now. A day or so on the couch will be in order. Well it gives me an opportunity to actually write this.

I really want to thank Eric for giving me the opportunity to write this blog, I’ve never done this sort of thing before, and I’m sure it shows. I hope as weeks go on you will find something in these blogs that is interesting to you. I’m just a guy who makes monsters…