Larger Than Life Portraits

At the Carfagno studio, we've made a lot of things.  I think everyone at the studio would agree; our backpack mascot portraits are the studio's claim to fame.  The most well known examples would be the Washington Nationals' Presidents, originally four, but recently added a fifth.  Unfortunately, I wasn't involved in the first four, but I've been a major part of the "big heads" following them.  As Randy often says: "We don't have big heads; we just build them."

Here's a few you can look up to:

William Howard Taft is the recent addition to the four presidents on the Washington Nationals.  Being the most recent one we've made, I was involved in almost every step, excluding the clothes.  I created the patterns for the structure of the skull and face, built the foam sculpt and inner metal frame, painted his eyes and skin, and made that manly hair style and 'stache.  He stands over 9 feet tall and has about a 4 foot diameter, given his apparent... robustness.

Jim Bowie was one of the first "big head" portraits I was majorly a part of.  He was made for the Texas Rangers' hero line up for their half time show, along with Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, and Nolan Ryan.  The shortest of the team, he stands at a mere 8 feet tall.  I created the patterns, built the foam sculpture, painted the eyes, and made his bowie knife, sheath and all.

Later on, Earl Campbell joined the Texas Rangers line up.  This one turned out to be quite a fun build, given the huge shoulders.  When said and done, this mountain of a portrait towers at almost 10 feet tall.  Again, as with Taft, I was involved every step of the way, but this time I also got to design his caricature as well as make patterns, build the sculpt, shape his hair and beard, and paint his eyes and skin tone.

Who said every president had to look heroic?  This was created for a more political minded client that wanted to use this giant evil caricature of Ahmadinejad for several protests concerning the Iranian president.  Unlike most of our portrait pieces, they asked for props to go along with the 9 foot tall villain.  He comes complete with a bomb detonator, a WMD, a bullet belt, and some atomic bling for good measure.  I created patterns, built the sculpt, and carved his hair.

And here we have George and Tom.  No, these aren't the Washington Nationals, they're the mascots for Washington Jefferson University!  Looking for a different caricature than their national counterparts, I got the chance to make the caricatures myself.  Afterwards, I once again made the patterns, built the sculpts, and painted the eyes.