Sparky is a mixed media piece that was completed in 2010. The piece is based on the dog Sparky from Tim Burton's film Frankenweenie. Prior to becoming a piece about Sparky, this project had actually been in development for several years and was supposed to have been several other things. Originally, the shape of the paper was the paper and what I could do with that was the main focus, but that changed (as well as the shape of the paper) when the Sparky idea came along.

About a year before the idea for Sparky came along, I had restarted this project by gluing 2 ply bristol board over the old project since at the time, I was still interested in maintaining the overall cutout shape of the old project and I thought it would a good idea for durability reasons as well. A year later when the paper was still blank and the Sparky idea had come along, I started out by choosing a pose for Sparky based on photographs I found on the internet and when I found what I wanted, I started a basic sketch and tried to fit this pose on paper. When I discovered that the pose I chose and the shape of my cutout design were not going to work, I modified the cutout design to go around the pose. Afterwards, I started doing the rest of the basic sketch work and quickly moved on to using charcoal and pastel. I yet again became dissatisfied by the results of my work and decided to leave Sparky alone for a while. Almost 6 months later, I came back to Sparky with renewed interest and some new ideas. I decided that Sparky wasn't just going to be a black and white drawing. Instead Sparky was going to be my latest mixed media experiment. Before I could do that, I decided that it would be best if I got the drawing part of Sparky finished first. For the next month I painstakingly drew and erased over and over again until I got everything just right. I constantly switched between black and white charcoal and black, white and grey pastels. Most of the blending and smearing was done with my fingers. I also sprayed layer after layer of workable fixative so I wouldn't constantly mess up something I've already done. When the drawing was close to being finished, I used rubber cement to glue it to the back of a piece of foam board. I did this for two reasons, one was to have it on a back base so the piece wouldn't warp when I sprayed it with the finalized fixative (a warped piece might have been harder to properly glue down later) and so I would have something durable to work with when I would eventually get to the 3-D work. After all the drawing was finished, gloss fixative was used to spray everything down and then at least two layers of polymer gloss was used since I wanted some transparent texture over the drawing. I created the basic skeleton design for the 3-D structure by using chicken wire which was glued down with hot glue. Pieces of canvas were then hot glued to the chicken wire to create a basic shape I could work with. I also attached hanging wire to the chicken wire as a means to be able to hang Sparky up when I was finished. After I gessoed the canvas, I used light molding paste to create the texture. I used light molding paste because I was working on material that might not have been durable enough for regular molding paste. I created the texture designs by using thin palette knives. As the molding paste was drying up, I painted the texture using mostly bone black acrylic paint. Two colors of metallic paint were applied by using a palette knife. Watered down polymer gloss was used to make the texture glow more in the light.

When I look at the product of what I created, I see a few mistakes that I wish I had been able to fix. I think there was a bit too much white used by Sparky's right eye and I thought the whit fur in the darker areas could have been done a little better, but overall I'm pretty happy with what I've done. When I think about where this piece was and how it was going anywhere even after the idea to use Sparky came along, I think it was a big accomplishment for me. I also see myself improving each time I do something like this. I'm getting better at using these other acrylic mediums and gel mediums that I discovered only a year before Sparky was completed. I'm getting better at efficiently creating durable 3-D structures. Also, I think this is a very good tribute to the movie Frankenweenie, which for me was really one of the most important achievements I feel that I've made. Also, for me anyway, this is proof that the mixed media direction I've been trying to go in since late 2007 works and the ideas I can come up with could be endless.