John Cormacáin
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johncbuddha.bsky.social
John Cormacáin
@johncbuddha.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.2K following 220 posts
Passionate about Europe (determined to see UK Rejoin EU)#FBPE. The environment (tackling Climate Crisis) and very passionate about the precious UK triumph- the NHS!🇪🇺💙🌍 Ⓥ 🌱
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johncbuddha.bsky.social
Incredible, insightful and intelligent piece on the sex/gender issue as it unfolds in USA
February 24, 2025 at 11:01 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 25
#ArtAdventCalendar
Merry Xmas!!🎄🎉

@jayispainting.earthskyart.ca Hope you are feeling better!🙏
My lifesize sculpture ‘Aiming for Peace’
Let’s stay on target!
I believe it’s art and culture that will bring peace to Earth, with determination and a laser like focus!!

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
☮️🎯🌍🎄💟
Bust shot of blueish green life size sculpture called ‘Aiming for Peace’. A female archer. Caucasian. Pretty? I think so! Her hair is tied up with some falling on one side of her forehead, and a tiny bit on the other side. She appears to look straight into the camera. Blurred in the foreground, is her fist holding a bow with the arrow pointing directly at us! The bow string running between the bow and the side of her face. This is not clear from the photo, you’d need to know the sculpture. The concept of the sculpture is that world peace will require the passion and tireless energy of youth, female energy in full force, and a laser focus like that of an archer. I believe it’s not only possible, but achievable! Merry Christmas, a happy new year and peace on Earth.
December 25, 2024 at 9:37 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Close up of the clay before moulding.
Close up of the clay portrait David Bowie. It was cross referenced with photos of the period mostly sculpted from the Aladdin Sane album cover but his eyes are shut in that. There were photos in the photo shoot at that time that I used. This photo is cropped just above hairline, side of face, bottom of neck, as he looks to the right of the viewer. The eyes looking straight ahead. You can see the intentional loose finish of the texture, clay tool marks and finger marks. The discerning might notice his left pupil is larger than his right, intentionally. To the right of his face is hard to recognise metal work. This is part of a Magic-Arm that was helping steady him during sculpting.
December 24, 2024 at 11:53 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 24
#ArtAdventCalendar
Really have enjoyed sharing with you my work and seeing the unique and diverse talents of the #ArtAdventCalendar community.
David Bowie as Aladdin Sane. Lifesize sculpture jesmonite. 2020.
As David sings with Bing: “Peace on Earth can it be?”🤞❤️
Close up clay in comments.
Clay sculpted bust. Hand tinted of David Bowie from the album Aladdin Sane. Cast in jesmonite coloured to look like the pottery clay I used. Quite crude, rough finish on the texture, but from a distance it looks quite tight. Hint through the tinted colour of eye makeup and lipstick using oil paints. The piece is facing us although the neck is at an angle. This isn’t obvious as the neck peters out as it comes to meet the recycled thick oak base. The piece is sat on a white plinth with a white background.
December 24, 2024 at 11:48 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Finished Wax figure of Benedict Cumberbatch from Madame Tussaud’s. Incredible job by the hair and colouring team. Exceptional artist those!!! Everyone who met him was bowled over, a very super cool and warm guy.
Hard to tell but a wax figure of Benedict Cumberbatch. Very realistic. Bust shot. Black suit with white hanky like a straight line, white shirt black tie. His hair is short back and sides combed over at the front. There’s an auburn tinge to his hair. Background plane, a studio shot. His face looks over the viewer to Benedict’s left. Eyes slightly more to his left.
December 23, 2024 at 10:28 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 23
#ArtAdventCalendar
Clay sculpt of Benedict Cumberbatch. Possibly my highlight at Madame Tussaud’s!! Thanks for looking, I’m guessing you won’t believe it but if you look in the comments is a photo of the wax figure. You don’t believe me do you?
Clay sculpture. Head of Benedict Cumberbatch. The hair and eyebrows are sculpted, more a loose suggestion. The eyes have little pins in to catch the light (just) and suggest a highlight to give the sculpt a feeling of life. Under the head you can see the mechanism that holds the head up and enables the head to be free to move directionally for access to sculpt in hard to get to places as well as from different angles. In the photo his face is pointing towards the right of Benedict. Eyes are sculpted by scooping out clay, appear to look slightly more to his left nearly into the camera.
December 23, 2024 at 10:24 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Couldn’t resist. A nice shot of the finished portrait.
Close up shot of the wax figure Mao Asada. You can now see her costume has flesh coloured sleeves and neck. Possibly the costume is donated by the ice skater so this covering might help keep the skaters warm. The chest on the deeply red dress is busy, folded and embroidered with a diamond insignia in the middle sparkling like it’s made out of diamonds. Picture is framed at the bottom with her leg and top of ice boots. You can see a green background behind her lit up by one of the spotlights on her the rest is in dark shadows with one light shining like a bright star pointing at us. She has elegant makeup on, she looks very, very happy.
December 22, 2024 at 12:06 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Years after we made and launched her wax figure, Mao came to Madame Tussaud’s Tokyo and was photographed next to her figure, you can just make her out in the shadows. Superb body sculpt by my friend Livia. The whole team, hair, colour and putting the body together - the best there is!!
Photograph of the real Mao Asada standing in the shadows next to the well lit ice skating wax figure. Mao stands very upright, hands behind her looking into the camera, smiling and looking very happy. Wax figure appears to be skating, frozen mid expression! On the circular base are lit, the Olympian rings. One leg/skate of Mao’s wax figure is on the floor at an angle. Both her arms are elegantly up and out in the air. Her balancing leg up, and bent at a right angle behind her. She wears a deep red sequinned shirt skirted dress. White lace up skating boots. Matching choker and wrist bands. The wax figure is looking into the distance, smiling - it looks very realistic.
December 22, 2024 at 11:57 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 22
#ArtAdventCalendar
Olympian Japanese ice skater 2012 clay sculpture. An honour to meet this delightful and talented young woman in person for photographs and to take measurements. You can see the finished figure haired and painted and a picture of her meeting the portrait in the comments.
Pottery clay head with sculpted tied back hair of Olympian ice skater, Japanese Mao Asada portrayed in her early 20’s. Her face looks a little to her left as do her eyes. She has a sweet smile revealing her top teeth. Background is pitch black and you can just make out the mechanism that holds her head up but allows a lot of directional movement necessary to sculpt the clay.
December 22, 2024 at 11:52 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Can’t resist a making of pic. During the process, I didn’t take many photos. A rare one on the clay in progress.
Photo of the face of the clay sculpture of the child in the piece Damocles. Her eyes are acrylic white. They have a corneal bulge for realism, it affects the eyelids shape. Pins are coming out of where the pupils would be to make sure the ‘real’ eyes, when positioned, will be able to focus on the bomb. There’s wire going across and up and down her face, this is just before she is wrapped up for the night, in damp cloth to stop the clay from drying up and cracking and to keep the cloth from leaving marks on the face. There is no hair as it will be inserted later on in the process. You see a bit of her shoulders, the raised arm and her chest.
December 21, 2024 at 12:34 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Close up of child from ‘Damocles’
Silicone head, individually haired, one at a time by a good friend. I sculpted, moulded and painted.
In the alt is the story of Damocles with mention of JFK’s inaugural speech that prompted the title. That a nuclear sword of Damocles hangs over our head.
“Dionysius, the sovereign of Damocles, was irritated when he realized the courtiers near to him would not believe it when he said that the glorious throne was not as comfortable as it appeared to be. In a court filled with flattery, envy, and vanity, he could not put up with Damocles who persistently *eulogized* the sovereign's happiness. One evening, at a splendid banquet, Dionysius ordered Damocles to sit on the throne and hung an unsheathed sword above his head suspended by a single horse hair. The weight of sword would soon snap the thin hair. Damocles was forced to realize that a throne of glory is always exposed to danger because of its very glory. On 25 September 1961, a short time after John F Kennedy's inauguration as President of the United States, he addressed the sixteenth session of the United Nations General Meeting:        'Everyman, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness.' THE HUMAN REVOLUTION by DAISAKU IKEDA VOL.4 P. 165 [* praised highly *] And so I pitted my sweet innocent daughter to the horror of that, in the hope people would be nudged into thinking about the utter evil that I believe Nuclear weapons to be.
December 21, 2024 at 12:28 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 21
#ArtAdventCalendar
“Damocles”
2007
Mixed media: silicone, fibreglass, plastic and wood. Details in comments.
My anti-nuclear weapons sculpture. A model of my then 4 year old daughter 3/4 scale. Above her a model of Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki 9/08/1945 60,000-80,000 died.
A 3/4 scale model, realistic, of a young girl 4yrs old on a white oblong plinth wearing her hair in bunches and a polka dot dress with a pink long sleeved T-shirt and slightly darker pink long socks, purple ‘jelly’ shoes, innocently reaches up to a model, painted all white of a nuclear bomb. Suspended by a wire from the ceiling. It’s a model of Fat Man the code name of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan 1945. The 2nd ever dropped on mankind after Hiroshima 2 days previously. The girl is nearly touching the bomb. My hope is knowing the potential utter and sheer devastation the bomb has, the audience are triggered with apprehension/fear/concern by seeing the innocent child who sees it like a large balloon. Its destructive powers are painfully aware to adults.
December 21, 2024 at 12:22 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
The finished wax figure.
A photo taken in a photography studio cropped mainly showing the portrait of Daisy Ridley as Rey from Star Wars. She’s wearing the costume she wears in The Force Awakens
December 20, 2024 at 11:52 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Took the wax figure to meet the gorgeous Lorraine Kelly (14/07/2016) for her TV show. I don’t think it made the edit. But was lots of fun.
From left to right, Rey wax figure, wax head, fibreglass body stands on a metal plate in her full costume complete with massive lightsaber . The TV broadcaster, Scottish accented, the lovely Lorraine Kelly, smiling away. And me, beaming as I am accredited with the wax figure even though many, many people worked on it, because I sculpted the head, the likeness kinda falls (or is raised) by my work. So feel very proud. Photo is taken in the corner of her TV studio for the local TV crew and Madame Tussaud’s crew to grab a photo, after we had filmed a short piece.
December 20, 2024 at 11:49 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 20
#ArtAdventCalendar
Sculpted Portrait of Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars for Madame Tussaud’s 2016. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet her. Working from photographs and video clips, thoroughly enjoyed this one. Finished figure in comments is honestly the waxwork!!
Pottery clay sculpture, of head with clay sculpted hair of Rey from Star Wars. Three quarter profile she looks slightly to her left. Her hair is tied up. She looks deadly serious to match her character. Background is mostly white. There is an almost imperceivable mark below her right eye on her cheek. The sort of detail that would come under scrutiny by me as I study the actress Daisy Ridley’s face. A scar by the looks of things. The eyes have the iris (the coloured bit) scooped out as a traditional sculptural way of describing eyes.
December 20, 2024 at 11:31 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Close up detail of the archer’s face….
A close up look of the archer’s face from over her shoulder, from the sculpture ’Aiming for Peace’. A white girl in her early 20’s, European features. She looks quietly determined. Her hair tied up in a bun, with some hair on her forehead, and a strand of hair falling passed her eyebrow. You see a tip of her shoulder and there’s a bit of the bow’s string and a bit of the arrow in the picture. She is realistically modelled with as much detail as I could put in to her eyes and lips. Not sure it worked but I wanted the detail to get less described as you got further away from her face. So her ear, is not as detailed as her lips. And not in this photo but by the time you get to the hand holding the bow , it’s more a suggestion. The Blue/Green patina is painted with car spray paints.
December 19, 2024 at 3:44 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 19
#ArtAdventCalendar
‘Aiming for Peace’
2016
Bronze Resin.
I was working for Madame Tussaud’s as a Senior Sculptor and did this piece in my spare time- started my journey into fine art.
That world peace ☮️would need:
•the steely focus of an archer.
•The passion of Youth.
•And female energy.
Sculpture of a female archer. Her outstretched arm follows the line of the arrow. The bow is just a suggestion, petering out after it leaves the grip of her left hand. The string leaving her fingers of her right hand pulling on it stops after it leaves her head towards where the top of the bow would be and the same coming off her chest to the bottom of where the bow would be. Arms are in full position to fire the arrow, she is poised to fire. Her hair is tied up. The sculpture ends just below her tummy button where her knickers would be but only a small area touches the base. Her sides up to her ribs are simply not there, cut off in a sharp line. She’s wearing a bra/boob tube type covers her chest. A realistic figure she’s young, pretty and looks determined, it’s painted to look like verdigris, Bluey-Green. She’s on a white box plinth against a white background.
December 19, 2024 at 3:28 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Cora it was such a new experience, but I spent decades working as a commercial artist in studios with lots of people so kinda used to it. With the public though, I got children to paint! It was the best fun!!
December 18, 2024 at 12:30 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Close up shot of Greta’s face.
Close up focusing on the features. Digital sculpture of Greta Thunberg. She looks to the very right of her. Her face almost straight on, just slightly to the right. The colour is a deep brown/orange. There’s a heavy dark shadow under her chin. Tiny bit of black background behind her head.
December 18, 2024 at 12:23 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 18
#ArtAdventCalendar
On Day 7 I shared my portrait of Greta Thunberg ’Follow The Science’. Here’s the sculpture, digital, sculpted in ZBrush. I’ll pop a detail in the comments.
I was proud of it, I’m a self taught sculptor and mastered ZBrush with only a little help from my friends. 😉
Digital sculpted portrait of Greta Thunberg. We are looking at a screen shot of the finished piece in ZBrush. The left side of her has her trademark platted hair. Right side of her, unplatted, her hair is blowing in a storm blowing her clothes, her very being - appears to be flapping in a turbulent wind it takes up over half the picture. Her steely expression taps into the singleminded autistic personality that she has chosen to focus on saving our world through the focus on the Climate disaster. She looks to her right and is mounted on a square block Plinth.
December 18, 2024 at 12:22 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Snoop unveils his wax figure. First time seeing it. He was very happy. I just sculpted the head while other very talented people painted and haired the figure.
Two photos side by side of Snoop standing with his wax figure and a second photo a close up of that photo. They are both wearing baggy khaki trousers and a loose fitting grey baseball jacket, black collar and cuff with yellow stripe. The wax figure holds his left hand in a gang sign. Snoop is pointing to someone in the audience, off stage.
December 17, 2024 at 10:59 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 17
#ArtAdventCalendar
Portrait of Snoop Dogg. 2009. Didn’t meet him just working from photos and measurements. Had the standard 5 weeks for this clay portrait. I’ll pop a pic of Snoop meeting the finish waxwork in the comments 😊😎
Pottery clay sculpt of Snoop Dogg. His face is towards us, he looks to the right of the viewer, very serious. He’s bare shouldered. The clay describes his goatee beard and cornrow hair. Background is a working sculpting studio.
December 17, 2024 at 10:56 AM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Close up shot of my part in the creation of this wax figure. Lyndon B. Johnson. The pottery clay sculpture. Sculpted from photos and old video footage.
Photo cropping just the facial features of a pottery (wet)clay portrait. Some enjoyable-to-sculpt details of eye bags, deep nasolabial folds, and tricky to pull off, forehead creases.
December 16, 2024 at 12:09 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 16
#ArtAdventCalendar
Hope no one minds or is discouraged with me posting my professional art. I was a commercial artist for 32 years😳 But I love being here with ALL the artists.
Finished wax figure of 36th US president Lyndon B. Johnson. I sculpted the portrait. Clay detail in the comments.
Portrait bust photo shot of realistic, lifelike wax figure of American President Lyndon B. Johnson . A tall man he looks intently and slightly down towards the viewer. Heavily filtered photo in a Polaroid style, in colour but with slight green tinge. Dark shadows fall on the left hand side of his face. Background is dark at the top but gets lighter and lighter as it reaches his shoulders. He wears a dark suit jacket, white shirt with narrow dark tie. You can just make out a small very thin metal pin on his lapel red, white and blue stripes. I would like to think that some would just think this is a photo of the man as opposed to the waxwork, such is the quality of the sculpting, the painting and the meticulous process of one hair at a time, being inserted for his eyebrows and hair. The period he is depicted is the end of the 60’s. He’s about 61 years old.
December 16, 2024 at 12:05 PM
johncbuddha.bsky.social
Day 15
#ArtAdventCalendar
One of my favourite drawn portraits. Pencil, coloured pencil, chalk and a dash of paint on brown wrapping paper.
Drawn a lifetime ago, the little boy would have grown up and have had kids of his own by now. Commissioned by a friend of little boys mum from a photograph.
Pencil sketch of a mixed race boy/toddler. His hair, fuzzy & large is loosely and casually rendered. He holds his hands up to grasp his cheeks. His expression seems to say “oh my gosh!” For he looks startled, surprised or maybe in disbelief. The facial features and hands are tightly rendered. Adding to the pencil with white pencil and white chalk and a bit of white paint. He wears a loose fitting white Tshirt. The drawing ends where his ribs would be. Including the boy’s left elbow but just comes to a stop above where his right elbow would be. I always felt that the subject, this ‘pretty/handsome boy, which burst off the page, was so incredibly and utterly cute - it was hard not to end up with a very sweet drawing.
December 15, 2024 at 11:17 AM