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Above you see the finished feet and lower legs. I
slaved over those shoe laces but they were worth it, every hour. The
bottom was wood but I wanted a more lifelike aspect so I went with a little
sandbox of Turface. That's fired and ground up clay and it looks like dirt
and yet is clean and granular. It works so well, I have used nothing else
before or since.
The gauze background reminds me that this photo was taken
professionally. I had to lug the big guy, at a hefty 350 lbs, to a
photographer for shots. It was zero degrees F that night when we lugged
him down there. We had to bring Babe up the back stairs and that meant
taking him around the back of the house when there was 10 inches of snow that
had set up like concrete in the ridiculous temperatures. I was cursing a
bit that night and then more when I got the bill. It cost more to shoot
pictures of the thing than it did to make! I was poor in those days and
dawgawnit! That was a lot of money! Someone who meant well was convinced
that I needed a pro to take my budding career to the next level and I bought in.
And paid. And I have never done so again. I now believe firmly that
I can take as good a picture as any of these pros. And it's cheaper to
think that way. Live and learn.
Here is the shop as it looked in those days and there is Babe,
stiff as a board.
Another view. There is the Carlsburg label glued
under the base. I don't remember how or why that got started but every one
of my statues has at least one Carlsburg label polyurethaned to the underside.
I think it was kind of my maker's mark. I'd probably been watching too
much Roadshow and imagining some appraiser long after I'm dead telling someone,
"...We know it's an authentic Birrer because of the Carlsburg label under the
base". You have plenty of time to think silly things when you do this work
so I could forgive myself for drifting or whatever it was. I used to
increase the labels by one for each subsequent piece, but the number is too high
now. Anyway, silly or not, superstition and tradition being what they are,
you will find a Carlsburg label under the base of my current statue: Babe Ruth
II. I almost skipped it but then thought, "...naw, I better", and so I
took the time to do it again.
Up on the shelf I can see the old 8-track player. I used
that up until the turn of the century and the Creedence Clearwater Revival
sounded great on many nights full of sawdust down there. It has since gone
to the dump.
Here is what you do when the light in your space is no good: Take
it outside. A nice Fall day and I have the good light to paint in.
This is one of my favorite shots of the Babe--from above. Here in the light, I could see the colors that I needed to in order to do a good job with the paintjob. The airbrush is seen at lower left and that is the ONLY way you are ever going to get a piece of wood to look like skin. If you paint skin a flesh color, you will get a very un-lifelike doll color. It's very flat and doesn't look realistic. That's because if you look closely at your hands, you will see many colors all playing nice in there: greens, blues, reds, orange and the traditional flesh color as well. With the airbrush, you can make passes and put the nuanced colors in without destroying the other, needed colors. That way, you can ease in on a very lifelike flesh color. But we now know flesh color is really many colors.
