Joey the Clown

Hello again boys and girls. Allow me to introduce the first of our new lineup of characters, Joey the clown.

Hello, Joe.

Joey is of course based on the great British clown Joseph Grimaldi as is traditonal, and his face paint reflects this. From the wide mouth to the triangular cheek patches and faint eyeshadow, I have attempted an approximation of the original Grimaldi facepaint and hairstyle, where I have deviated is in the colour of the hair, which ought to be blue by rights (according to most illustrations)but we had ginger left over from Judy and as it does crop up in a few pictures of him we decided to go with that in the mohawk that he seemed to prefer.

The puppet itself started life as Seppl from the Kasperletheater and the first step was to remove his hat and body which left him like this;

Seppl on the left

Then I provided him with a base coat of emulsion, avoiding of course his eyes and mouth.

Base coat.

The result is actually slightly creepy, something of the Jason Voorhees about him but thankfully not for long as I was about to provide the final touches, widening the mouth, faint eyeshadow, the cheekpatches and some new eyebrows of course. The end result was very satisfactory and all we then needed was an outfit for him, which is where of course Abakhan comes in, ah fabric warehouse of joy! I always wanted a Harlequin style of pattern, the kind of material that chef’s trousers are generally made from. Unfortunately the diamonds on the standard fabric are too big to be effective on a small puppet. But a quick trip to the craft shed found us exactly the same design but smaller perfect for our Joey.

Oh, the colour, it brings out your eyes!

And thankfully he is a fairly simple puppet to be starting with, once his onsie was in place with a simpe collar and some hands (and a ring) on we have ourselves a clown ready for the public, indeed he was a big hit at a Christmas Fair this weekend. Just goes to show, all the world loves a clown.