We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mark Newman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mark below.

Mark, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I was an Illustration major in Art School graduating with Honors back in the mid 80’s. I’ve always enjoyed sculpting more than 2D art and was lucky enough to find freelance work sculpting things for the ‘Gift and collectibles’ industry. First ‘professional’ work I had was sculpting ceramic masks designs that hang on your wall. Decorative arts, for a small company. That blossomed into designing and sculpting fantasy characters, wizards and dragons type stuff with crystals for a collectible line I help create.
I was good enough to find work for other companies along the way building a reputation of quality and hitting deadlines.

Attending conventions and trade shows I started networking more and finding work in the special effects and video game industries. Sculpting, mold making, puppet fabrication. Branching out was key in being able to stay working as a freelancer
all of my career. I formed my company Mark Newman Sculpture Inc back in 1997 and still going strong. Mostly a 1 man show.
I was able to create and produce my own ‘Fine Art’ limited edition figurative bonze pieces. As well and sculpting my own crazy monster type pieces and selling them as model kits for collectors to build and paint themselves.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

One of my most well known work was sculpting a line for collectible hand painted resin small statue line called Ebony Visions.
It was created and designed by my friends Thomas Blackshear. I was asked by Thomas if I wanted to sculpt his designs and gladly took on the challenge. This line became very well know in the African American community and crated and produce works for around 20 years. I worked out a royal deal with the production company and that was key in me making more income than just per sculpture. I also do lots of work in the Comic book and movie character collectibles industry as well working for Companies such as Sideshow Collectibles, Spirit Halloween Stores. 2K video game company and many more.

My ‘style’ of work is all over the place from cartoony wacky characters and monsters to classic figurative works. Having a broad rage of styles opened up many avenues for finding work and staying busy with very little burnout moments.
a few of my most proud and notable works are as follows. Sculpting 2 bronze fireplace facades for George Lucas and his Skywalker Ranch. These were designed on paper by one of Lucas films concept designers Erik Tiemens. I was tasked with sculpting his designs in bass relief and working with the bronze foundry casting and installing them. One went in George’s bedroom over his fireplace and the other at the Skywalker ranch in Marin county CA. Another big bronze works commission I had was designing and sculpting 10, 3/4 life size sports figures for Stanford University athletics department that are installed in the Arriaga Sports facility buildings on the campus in Palo Alto. CA. Recently Another very cool project for me was working on some character for a brand new Universal Studios Theme Parks project in Orlando Florida where they are building a Theme park based on the Universal Monsters call Dark Universe. It’s due to open sometime next year 2025 so I can’t elaborate on the actual work I had done yet.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is the opportunity to make a living doing the thing I love to most. Making Cool Stuff! Most every day is fresh and inspiring for my well being. I still to this day for the most part get up everyday excited to get into my studio and work away. either finishing up a project and or starting a new one. Working with clients to translated their ideas into something that most of the time reaches beyond their expectations. Working on my own stuff when things are slow is such a refreshing feeling as well. I find on my free time I’m still doing something creative. it’s who I am and how I’m built.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When working for around 18 years on Thomas Blackshear’s Ebony visions line of collectible, adding new pieces to the collection every year at times became very taxing on me. Working from Thomas drawings and photo reference of models he photographed to sculpt the pieces. I went back and forth with Thomas and the project manager/art director a lot to fine tune the poses and expressions of the figures. Sometimes working with just a quick sketch describing the design and mood to depicted the scene and me interpreting it in 3 dimensions was a frustrating challenge a times. Changes, redesigns and nit picking the sculpture to bring each piece to the level of each prior piece was taxing. The incentive to keep working on this line for all those years was the pride I felt when the pieces hit the market with flying colors with the collectors. Also or course received a royalty on sales was also a very big part or staying resilient I cannot lie. It did very well for me. Thomas’s name was of course attached to this line with me mostly being in the background as the “ghost sculptor”. I did not have any problem with that as my ego is very much in tact. Eventually people started to know I was the sculptor on this well received line so that was a good feeling and kept me in the minds of future art director and project manager form other companies to work with.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @marknewmansculpture
• Facebook: Mark Newman and Mark Newman Sculpture. not sure of the actual URl’s