Mother and Child, Finished

Here, finally, are my pictures of the finished mother and child figurine. I have my own opinions on how it turned out, but I choose to keep them to myself for now.

Walking Nude

This is my newest digital drawing. It took me about a week to make. Its related to the clay figure that I posted recently, and is based on a reference image that I used.

I have the mother and child figurine back. I have to do what I can

today to hide a small crack, but I'll post pictures soon.

Apple Turkeys 2

Here are this year's apple turkeys. Noah made the snowman, Jeremy made the elephant triceratops, my dad made the alien turkey, my mom made the only regular turkey, and I made a steampunk turkey.

Digital Painting

This is my first finished drawing using my new Wacom Bamboo Create digital drawing tablet. It was expensive, but I've been thinking about getting one for a long time. I have such a difficult time drawing that I thought that I could use any advantage that I can get. So far it feels like digital drawing might be the best medium for me. I drew this in GIMP, but I think that Photoshop is still my application of choice.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that I got a glimpse of the Woman and Son figurine today, and it looks like the firing went fine. The colors are a little darker than I had expected, but the clear glaze looks good. The bad news is that I only got a glimpse of the sculpture because it is currently at a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I'm going to have to wait a few days until its cooled down to room temperature and they can take it out of the kiln (they are very cautious). So no figurine quite yet.

Hopefully I'll have another post for you guys tomorrow.

New Project

Pictures are in chronological order. After a failed attempt at building the form, I had to bake some of the clay on to make a more sturdy armature. This piece is taking many, many hours. I'm using a mix of 2:1 Sculpey Firm and Super Sculpey, which seems to work really well. I have big plans and a complex thought-process with this one, but I'll share that next time. She does have a head, but that is also for another time.

The sitting female has also been fully repaired. Next step is buy materials for the patina.

Going to Pieces

I got my pieces back from CreativeClay on Saturday. As you can see, the female figure fell apart on me. I am currently putting her back together with foul-smelling exopy putty. It smells like chemical tuna.

The mother and son faired much better-- no damage at all. The colors look very much the same, but a little darker and richer. I took her to my car, put on two coats of clear glaze, and brought her right back to the store. I'll get her back again soon, so everyone pray that there is no crazing or crawling or milky clear-glaze.

My bro's guest spot is on hold until I can get Blender to stop lagging, or learn to use a better video editing tool. Or shoot a continuous video, whichever comes first.

Everyone's Favorite Horseman of the Apocalypse

 I had a good time remembering how to paint. These are water-based acrylics made for painting models, called Vallejo's Game Color paints. When I do this again I think I'm going to get Citadel paints, and get an ink wash* this time.

*Ink washes are thinned paints which fall into the cracks of a model, making for easy shading. They can also provide a mostly transparent layer of color on top of another paint.

SculptorbyDay, The Early Years 3

 















This little guy was probably my favorite back in the day. Its kind of a complex model, but it is a guy with swords coming out of his arms and two cannon-arm thingies coming out of his back. He has a huge backpack on that is a teleporter. So awesome. If you look at the enlarged version you can see how I tried to paint the gems as if they were clear, keeping in mind that they are 1-2 mm long.

Because I didn't think that the colors were well-represented, I have included a third, modern-day pic of the whole crew as a bonus.

SculptorbyDay, The Early Years 2

Here are two more figures from my youth. They are about the same size as the green guy from before. I was big into this color scheme at the time. Tomorrow I will post my favorite model, and then the finished death sculpture the next day. I also dropped off the mother and son figurine, and it should be fired by next weekend.

SculptorbyDay, The Early Years 1

The first picture is of the first figure I ever painted. Its a robot beetle thingy, about half an inch long. I painted it when I was in elementary school, hanging out in my friend Paul's garage. The second picture is of the last figure I painted before I moved away from this hobby, when I was 15. He's a little over an inch tall. I took the photos during my first foray into posting my work online, though I wont tell you guys where because there is also embarrassing teenage poetry posted on that account.

In any case, painting the death figure is going pretty well, but I think I'm just going to dry-brush the highlights instead of getting down to every detail by itself. A good friend of mine once told me that my work has a heaviness to it, and I'm seeing what she meant with this guy. I think that the goal for my next project will be to move away from that heaviness.

Paint and Childhood Memories

I've started to paint the death figure with water-based acrylics. I am at the stage of the piece where I start to see everything that is wrong with it. I do want to finish it however-- I looked around my room and saw how many projects I have left unfinished.

It was the mother and child figurine that really made me realize how difficult it can be to actually see a sculpture through to completion. After asking around for quite some time, I have finally found a place that should get it fired for me, named Creative Clay. Most places don't want to put other's work in jeopardy because they don't trust that a stranger knows enough to keep his or her work from exploding. And the Torpedo factory does not do bisque firing. Thankfully, firing is one of the services that Creative Clay offers specifically.

While I paint the death figure, my plan for the blog for the next few days is to post pictures that I took when I was 13 or 14 or something. I was painting tiny war game figures at the time, from Games-Workshop. I hope you guys like them. Also, I have another guest-spot planned from everyone's favorite Computer Genius, The Noah. Stay tuned.