April 29 - Deer

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

~ John Muir

Seeing a deer always seems to bring a little bit of magic with it.  Like they're standing on the edge of nature, observing you - a reminder that there is a whole hidden world just beyond the horizon.

This one's from the Isopresso members collection.  They have a knack of bringing a quiet elegance to their designs - it took a couple attempts until I was semi-happy because the source is such perfectly proportioned masterpiece. 

Those dainty back legs were an exercise in patience I did not win trying to get everything to stand correctly - hence the enormous flower patch (and feet deep in the water).  

(view other deer)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

December 8 - Masayoshi's Deer

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say
Rudolph with your nose so bright
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?

~ Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

This is another design I saw on Masayoshi Matsumoto's page, it took a number of attempts to figure out how put it together - it was fun. I'm trying to use up some random balloons that either don't go in my kit of colors or have been pulled out for some reason, I have a couple legless rainbow deer bodies to show for the previous attempts - but they will make excellent resources for when I want to try building something similar to this.

I ended up building two.  When I built the black nosed reindeer I felt like I got some of the proportions a little wonky, I definitely like the Rudolph body better, it's smaller and cuter.  That's the general rule of balloons I believe, bigger can be neat - but smaller is generally more adorable.

One of the more difficult things to get right on a design that has longer legs is leg sizing and positioning, thankfully Mr. Matsumoto has shown a great way to make that slightly easier by creating stands for his designs.  I brought Rudolph to give to the folks at my gym today.

... but we were going to go to the movies tonight!

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Other posts with Masayoshi Matsumoto's designs:


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December 7 - Blast Reindeer

Santa knows Physics: Of all colors, Red Light penetrates fog best. That's why Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer never got the gig.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

This reindeer is the other Christmas design on the Sam Cremeens download Link Faces (link).

This is another fantastic concept video, I can easily see how I would adapt this face structure to a number of things.  You are left to create the body yourself, this time I used John Justice's Adventure pups for that.

I really need to spend a little more time practicing my artwork.  Sam shows clearly how he draws his face, but something about drawing on a created balloon makes my hand shake or hold the pen at an awkward angle.  On the black-nosed reindeer, this created some very thick lines as I kept trying to straighten out the wobble (hence the lack of pictures of the two of them together).  So much of this is the confidence of knowing what you're doing, a slow line is a shaky line.

"You look more like snow deer..." .... "You realize this is why we won't let you play our games ... "

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Other posts with Sam's designs:


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