Our latest Kick-About prompt made my 3D-fingers itch: something about James Gillray’s physical deformations and soft, pink colour palette had me defaulting to this technique, in which you ‘free-build’ out of pads of stuffed nylon and use a needle and thread to ‘sculpt’. Next, you use PVA glue to harden the object, and then you can get on with painting.

Handy for me that Gillray’s cartoons extend to images of guillotined heads being displayed on pikes (meaning I didn’t have to give time and energy to fabricating bodies). My husband said, ‘It’s Mrs Thatcher!’ and there is a touch of her Spitting Image puppet about this luckless aristo-king.

Le raccourci (“the shortened one”) is French Revolutionary slang apparently, and refers to the fact that the condemned were, quite literally, “shortened” by the guillotine…






6 responses to “Le Raccourci (2025)”

  1. its mad to me how you can get so much character out of something so simple as a bit of Nylon! Bravo Phil! X

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    1. Hey Graeme – ta very much; it was a good fit between the ‘muppetty’ technique and the prompt X

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  2. You’re so ambitious! It would make a great puppet head–very expressive. (K)

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    1. I know – feels like he should be sitting between Statler and Waldorf in The Muppets going ‘Boo! It was rubbish!’ The ‘problem’ with the KA is that when the idea comes, the idea ‘gets’… 😀

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  3. I would have nightmares if this character were in my house! Great work, Phil and to quote your words to me “JG would be truly heartened” to see this.

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    1. I am currently being eyeballed by this character, as he is sitting behind my computer!

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