Bill Nelson is a Facebook friend of mine. He’s always posting something wonderful to look at. He is an illustrator, a sculptor and a ventriloquist figure maker. His work makes me laugh and wish I had just a tiny bit of his talent.

Some of Bill Nelson’s figures have found homes with people we’ve heard of before, Demi Moore, Whoopie Goldberg, David Copperfield and the list goes on.

HIs illustrations have won over 900 awards. You might have seen Bill’s work on the covers for CQ Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, or Lands’ End.

Bill is listed in Who’s Who in America and created a series of Big Band Illustrations for the Untied States Postal Service stamps.

He told me that Super Sculpey was his favorite material to use to sculpt his characters.

I wanted to know what he enjoyed most about creating his people. He said, “Bringing the face to life by tinting and coloring, that’s my favorite part. Wigging is almost as much fun because they both bring the character to life.”

I mean, look at these faces……….

Bill said that he doesn’t have any kind of regular schedule for creating his characters unless he has a commission.

He spends part of his time teaching an entire curriculum on the art of dollmaking online at That Creative Place. He also teaches workshops in his home in North Carolina.

Not only will you learn from a master, I think Bill is the kind of guy that will make your learning experience extremely entertaining.

There is more to learn about this amazing artist, so you might want to visit his website, which by the way is one of the coolest I’ve seen.  You’ll be entertained by his work for sure.

I’m leaving you with this one, it makes me laugh out loud. It’s “Boris Karloff between takes”, but all I see is Frank kickin’ back. I’m laughing now.

Related Posts:

• Michaela Groeblacher’s Sculpture That Helps Us Remember Who We Are
• Catherine Merrill’s Language of Everywoman
• The Archetypal Sculpture of Cheryl Tall
• Sculptural Artist Andrew Myers’ Leap of Faith
• Linda Ganstrom’s Figurative Ceramics

I stumbled across a video today and was fascinated with these giant puppets. French performance art company Royal de Luxe is responsible for these fantastic characters. Royal de Luxe is a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. They were founded in 1979 by Jean Luc Courcoult.

The Sultan’s Elephant is a story about a time-travelling girl, which has taken place in cities around the world and is quite well known. But not so in the U. S.

The Sultan’s Elephant is the fifth in a series using giant puppets. Others are: The Giants Falls from the Sky, The Giants Falls from the Sky, Last Voyage, Return to Africa, The Giraffe Hunters, the Hidden Rinoceros.

I followed the link to YouTube and found many more videos about the girl, the elephant, and the giraffe. I have always loved dolls and the stories about dolls coming to life. Little people like The Borrowers, and giants always captured my imagination….this  reminds me of Gulliver’s travels, except the men and women who help this little girl through her adventure, seem to adore her. The girl and the elephant look amazingly real and if you use your imagination, you might be able to forget for a moment that they aren’t. I just had to share it with you.

I’m still finding other series like this one in an article at Socyberty.com called A Giant Awakes in Nantes. You can see many more photos by misterstf on Flickr.

Once you have watched the video above, you might want to double click on the video itself and it wil take you to YouTube where you can find many other related videos. It seems there is a giant spider too, that scales the sides of buildings. Enjoy!

Related Posts:

• Her Morning Elegance – Video
• The Intriguing Figurative Paintings of LISA G.
• Derek Kinzett’s Wire Sculpture Revisited
• Maureen Carlson’s Polymer Clay Characters
• The Characters of Bill Nelson