Wednesday, June 18, 2008

the Evolution of an Etsy Sculpture!

It's not very often that I'm asked to sculpt a dog as unusual as this Chinese Crested, so I thought I might make a little documentary of my process! This little guy's name is Fang, and he was rescued from a bad situation...but lives happily now with his owners in Sydney, Australia.

Step 1: I print out all of the dogs I need to work on, so I can refer to their photos.


I roll out the body. I added all those darker spots individually, then rolled them down so they were nice & flat. A little bit of wire adds strength to the sculpt.


...making some feet.


...attach those feet to the body.


Sculpting the head.


Here I'm adding some eyes. I use Hematite beads for eyes, I like the shine. That's a little polymer clay bowl I've made to keep my beads in.


Adding a mouth.


There! I've got all of his parts put together now. I think he kind of looks like a piglet at this stage.


I'm starting to add that white fur here.


...some shoulder fur.


Ta-da! All finished. Now all I have to do is bake him in the oven.


Onto the next dog on the list!

7 comments:

Shannon MacGrogan-Ellis said...

Thank you for this! I loved seeing how you work. :) Did you really post this at 2:45am, though? Girl! Get some sleep!

Paula Nelson said...

Ha!
I had 2 cups of coffee after dinner...then couldn't sleep. Go figure :~)

Safari Lee said...

Ooooh, me and my boyfriend are so excited :) Fang is asleep on the couch next to us and doesn't even realise he's a blog star :) You have done such a wonderful job. He is perfect. (It was really funny and a little disconcerting when I read "Now just to bake him in the oven!") Thanks for immortalizing him for us :))

Sunny Lynn said...

Thank you for sharing this process, I thoroughly enjoyed it! This little guy is so stinkin' cute! You did a fantastic job recreating the breed and the personality!

Beverly said...

wow thanks for showing your process. i really loved it! i had no idea how you were going to pull off a chinese crested sculpt but this guy is so CUTE!
how do you manage to make your sculpts without leaving so many fingerprints in the polymer?
and i have to compliment you on your nicely manicured nails in ALL your pictures, you can add hand model to your resume! ;)

Paula Nelson said...

Aww, thank you!

If you look closely, you'll see my sculpts are COVERED in fingerprints. ...but I don't mind that look one bit. I know many polymer clay artists wear gloves to minimize fingerprints. (...or they sand/polish their sculpts after baking them.)

I already have 'hand model' on my resume!:
http://tinyurl.com/5zbx4g

www.marymade.it said...

you're one clever lady!