I appreciate all kinds of arts in general because it takes a lot of dedication and hard work  from the artists to achieve the end result. Most of us like to be in our comfort zone by just clinging on to the safety of a regular job. Most of us when we see a fine piece of art, we often concluded that the artist must be really gifted and it should be easy for them. We come quickly to this conclusion because we are only seeing the end result, thus judging only the art work itself. What we don’t know is that the artists may have been learning and practicing for many years to get to that point. It also takes a lot of ups and downs to be an artist in this century. Then why don’t we see them give up? I guess they simply love what they do and it gives them a sense of personal accomplishment.

Another thing I like about the artists is that they love to share their work with others. Just ask and they will more than happy to talk about their work. This is exactly what I did with Ricardo Fernandes, a sculptor from Sao Paulo, Brazil. His Predator sculpture has attracted much of my attention. Before going into the details about the Predator, I would like to give a quick intro about Ricardo. He is known by his students and clients as Rick Fernandes. Rick is a freelance sculptor focusing on the creation of characters like the Predator below from the movie Predator featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. At one point in his career he was assisting one of the great art teachers in Brazil, Alex Oliver. Rick has been working with sculptures and traditional drawings for seven years and recently as a professional for the last three years. He is currently teaching character creation at Meslies,  school of 3D cinema and animation. His  students must be  very proud to have such  a talented teacher! He consider himself as an autodidact (a self-taught person) being educated in a non-traditionally ways most of  the time. Being humble he doesn’t consider himself as a prowess. Rick enjoy studying  the work of many inspirational artists  like  Rick Baker, Stan Winston, Ray Harryhausen, Dick Smith, Alex Oliver, Miles Teves, Carlos Huante, Alan Lee, John Howe and many other artists.

Rick’s Predator sculpture which you can see the detailed pictures below took him 26 hours to sculpt, divided in 5 days. The sculpture was inspired by the Predator movie. In the movie, the Predator is an alien humanoid with advanced technology and a penchant for hunting difficult preys. The creature descends on Earth interested in hunting exotic species, the humans. The sculpture is in a 1:4 scale and it was used as a study for a 1:1 scale piece. Materials used for this sculpture was plastilin, a non hardening material. Some wire tools and dentist tweezers were also used to design the fine details of the sculpture. For the finishing touch, water and solvent were used. This work is being dedicated to Rick’s wife who gave him the motivation and strength to complete the project.

Thank you Rick for sharing and keep up the good creative work!