Interview With Kenny Croes - Part 6

Kenny Croes ventriloquist figure builder, talks about painting his figures in Part Six of this Seven Part Interview.

Video Transcript:

did you take any painting classes or did
you study uh painting anywhere or on
figures or did you just teach yourself I
well taught myself I mean I trial and
error that’s my uh my my primary method
um but although my wife is an artist so
she helped me kind of get going on it I
mean she’s a uh you know she would
critique because I I I I have a little
bit of red green color blindness I mean
I see color but you know but but
sometimes you know subtle Shades um I
need a little help on so I’m always
showing her stuff and and saying you
know is this right but i’ I’ve kind of
recently kind of had a breakthrough on
doing shading and and wrinkle lines and
and things like that I’ve come upon a
method um
um you know that I just from watching
other guys how they do it when I went to
the
convention um that was a huge help to me
um I went to the convention my first one
last year in fact I remember seeing you
there I don’t think we ever got a chance
to really meet I don’t think so yeah but
uh but I remember seeing you there I’m
too shy to go up to talk to many people
but uh but I I uh was actually that was
the first time I’d ever seen any other
professional dummies other than the ones
I made wow you know I’d never the only
other ones I’d ever seen in my life was
the Jerry Mahoney that I had as a kid so
um although I did see a bunch of them
once when I went to this audition for
soap I which of course I didn’t get but
um but uh but to really look at them
from a you know an analytic analytical
point of view um I’ve never seen really
one was that was the first time at that
convention and I was really able to look
carefully at how people did their paint
you know and and uh and then I remember
watching a uh Jeff Dunham video I’m h
building uh one of his characters and he
talked about dry brushing and and how he
did that and so it’s kind of like that
kind of is how I’ve learned how to do it
and uh um but you know I mean there’s
nobody there’s no school you can go to I
mean you pretty
much I mean unless you live down the
street from somebody you builds them you
know you’re pretty much on your own yeah
although one interesting thing is I live
when I was a kid I lived on A Street in
Bakersfield California where I grew up
and there there were three
ventriloquists on our street really
isn’t that amazing that is I I didn’t
know a ventriloquist would live that close to
each other I I know that’s surprising
too but there was a guy that was a
policeman who did ventriloquism for the
schools and then a kid down the street
named Jack sharp who was a ventriloquist
and I was a ventriloquist