As an artist Steve is very spontaneous with his creations, anyone lucky enough to visit the Winterburn studio or the aptly named “Alladin’s Cave” by those who have, will know this very well with hundreds of WIP sculptures filling his creative space. This spontaneity was ignited a couple of years back when he became engrossed in the hit TV series The Peaky Blinders, he was straight in the studio knocking up his portrayal of the brothers which he named “Red Right Hand”, he has since also done individual portrait studies of the characters that are yet to be finished and cast. Along this journey of inspiration, the sculptures gained incredible traction on Steve’s social media, in particular his Instagram account, with hundreds of thousands of interactions on the likenesses every time he posted them.
Due to this amazing reception to the sculptures and down to how much he enjoyed the whole creative process of capturing the swagger and feel along with the likenesses of the characters, Steve and Ben had the idea of creating a monumental scaled Tommy Shelby. Father like son, they both impatiently ripped into this project with ben welding up the armature and blocking up the sculptures foundation and Steve then being unleashed with his create urges oozing over the excitement of this sculpture. This whole process was kept under wraps by the Winterburns until the likeness and character of Tommy was captured, with the intention of doing a grand unveil on Steves ever growing Instagram account. However, neither could foresee how well the unveiling would be received though.
When Steve had decided he was happy with the progress of the sculpture and he was ready for people to see it, Ben filmed and edited a video of Steve sculpting the small Tommy Shelby (component of the “Red Right Hand” piece) and transition to him stood beneath the towering presence of the new huge life and a quarter scaled Tommy. When they hit the post button on Instagram it didn’t take long to see that this was being welcomed very well by everyone that was seeing it both old followers and new! The exponential growth of this video seemed never ending at the time, eventually it slowed to a halt and now sits at a whopping 6.3 million views.
This was huge for Steve to have a passion driven project like this that is received in such a way, there is truly no greater feeling for an artist.
This is only the start of an exciting journey for this monumental Tommy, some very exciting plans for the future of this piece, so keep one eye on this project as it progresses.
