Mister Fleer
His sneer is the last thing you'll see before the big top goes dark
Lurking beneath the shadow of his tilted brim, Mister Fleer harbours a silence far more terrifying than any fairground scream. He waits in the dark places of the funhouse, his fixed, cruel grimace mocking every soul foolish enough to wander off the illuminated path.
The Inspiration
I enjoyed making Mister Grin so much that I just had to make another scary clown – Mister Fleer.
The reaction that the first clown got was a rush – so I had to see if I could make another, except even more nasty. Mister Fleer isn’t as psychotic or unhinged looking as Mister Grin, he’s just far more evil … in a measured way. Which is exactly what I was aiming for.
The Craft
There’s a lot of shading and blending on this piece, it really was a great learning exercise. The cheeks are line-shaded and then blended, to try to give shape as well as tone. The Nose was an exercise in gradient blending that, whilst simple looking, gave me a lot of satisfaction when I got it right.
There are large areas of time-consuming black fill, as well as my favoured heavy line-work all of which were carried out with a wire nib. The little “crinkly bits” half-hidden in the dark were achieved by creeping up on the final dimensions, one dark stroke at a time – worth the extra time to get the additional depth in the eye sockets.
This particular plywood sheet was a bit feisty and had areas of very thin veneer, which meant avoiding burn-through was a constant feature of the process.
