The Making of Grumpy Boob Man

So you may be wondering, “Sam, what the fuck is a Grumpy Boob Man?”

Well, the Boob Man is my first mixed media sculpture, and if you would like to learn more about how he was created — and perhaps more importantly, WHY he was created — keep on reading!

After a semester of dabbling in ceramics while I attended my Intro to Ceramics class in September 2022, I finally realized what I had been pursuing in my textured acrylic paintings for so long. I needed to build a 3D piece of art!

I loved the idea of pushing a concept off of the canvas and giving it life and space in the real world. I want my art to be something that the viewer can experience, and just painting on a flat surface wasn’t enough to capture what I wanted to do. Ceramics was closer to what I was craving, but it can be a difficult medium to work with, as your sculpture needs to be fired in a kiln without supports, and this limits the sizes and shapes that you can work with. I left Intro to Ceramics inspired to create, but not with clay and glazes — I wanted to create a sculpture. In fact, I had LOTS of ideas for sculptures! But where to begin?

After doing some research into the sculpting process and learning what materials other creators were using, I decided that it would be best to start small. Creating a 3D piece of art is a lot more difficult than painting or drawing, and since I was trying my hand at this the first time, I didn’t want to jump into a large project and end up with expected (or unsolvable) challenges mid-way through.

When inspiration struck, I doodled the concept for the Grumpy Boob Man on a post-it note and immediately lost the doodle in a public place. When I got home and noticed that my sketch had dropped out of my pocket at some point, I realized this might be an awkward post-it note for someone to find randomly on the floor. When I sheepishly told my partner that I had drawn something a bit scandalous and weird, and had promptly lost the drawing, he immediately said, “It was a boob, wasn’t it?”
I said, “What do you take me for?!”
But of course it was a boob.

In the background, you may notice the 2nd attempt at concept art for the Boob Man, which I did not lose.

I constructed the body for the Boob Man first, and began to build his facial features up. His body was made of layers and layers of crumpled-up newspaper, taped tightly together. It formed a very solid core, but unfortunately it also became incredibly heavy which caused problems later on. If I were to go back in time, I would have made his body out of something more lightweight, such as foam.

Once the body shape was finished, he resembled a large bean. I covered him completely with air-dry clay and worked in the details of his features. This part was pretty fun, and it was easy to make his facial features dramatic and large without using a lot of clay because of the paper supports inside. This stage took several sessions, as I would have to let his face dry before I could work on covering the rest of the body, and vice versa.

I worked on the different parts of his body separately. His hands, arms, legs and feet were made out of rigid foam that I carved into shape. After that I experimented with different ways of covering the foam so that I would have an outer shell that was smooth and durable. I covered one foot with a brand of spackling that is sand-able and dries into a foam-like density, and I covered the other with a coating of plaster. Both of these methods had pros and cons, but I ultimately I ended up liking the look of the spackling coating and used that for the majority of his limbs.

The limbs were reinforced with wooden dowels. In the case of his legs, the dowels extend up into the body and down into the wooden base that he was mounted on. Mounting him on a temporary base was crucial, because it allowed me to stand him up and test his weight distribution. Unfortunately, this is where I began to encounter problems. Boob Man’s body (his boob, if you will) was so heavy and his spindly cartoon legs were so thin that he bends backwards slightly, and this caused front of his leg to crack slightly. I attempted to patch this crack with a variety of different materials, but every time he moved, it would reappear.

I consider this to be a valuable lesson. Your supporting structure (skeleton) of the sculpture is the most important part of the build! I should have used a thicker dowel from the beginning, or maybe made his entire leg out of wood, because the combined weight of his paper core and the air-dry clay was far too heavy for the tiny supports that I used.

So majestic, so boob-ful! I wanted his feet and hands to be that classic Mickey Mouse cartoon style.

Once his limbs were fixed in their permanent places, I covered the seams with air-dry clay, and he was finally standing all by himself! On to the easiest step — painting!

Painting the Boob Man was the fastest and easiest part of this process by far. I think he turned out fantastic, and a coat of paint brought out the boob in him. After I finished painting him, I prepared a proper wooden base to mount him on permanently. It helps with presentation, and it’s also a solid, heavy block of wood so I don’t have to worry about bumping him over.

So that was how the Grumpy Boob Man was created! The point of building the Boob Man was to learn about sculpture building and the challenges that I may encounter. The lessons that I learned during this build, especially about weight distribution, will be VERY valuable for my future projects.

If you have read this far and you’re still wondering, “But why a GRUMPY BOOB MAN?”…

The Grumpy Boob Man is a piece of LGBTQ (specifically transgender) art. My concept was to represent the struggles of transmen who have large chests. For a lot of transmen, your chest is a constant reminder that your body isn’t right and doesn’t fit how your soul feels, and having boobs can be an unending source of dysphoria. Even while binding and layering on clothes to try and hide your chest, there is always anxiety that it’s not good enough or that something looks out of place. Grumpy Boob Man’s exasperated, grumpy expression is meant to capture the “UUGGHHHH” feeling of having boobs. He’s done with this shit and he’s ready to go home.