I was inspired by a friend to try to create a Cerberus out of clay.  After about 3 hours and 2 armatures of attempts, I gave up on that idea (for now) and made a teddy bear out of the brown clay I had been working with.  I think partially because I had worked and reworked the clay so many times that there was a bubble of air in the bear’s back that I missed, so he has a bit of scoliosis going on, though you can’t see that from the front of course!

Olive Bear, Grape Bear, Chocolate Bear made of polymer clay

Olive Bear, Chocolate Bear, Grape Bear made of polymer clay

Olive Bear, Chocolate Bear, Grape Bear made of polymer clay

Still, I thought he was pretty adorable so I decided to go with the same idea and create more bears in different colors with different patterns on their patches.  You can see some subtle differences between each of them size-and-shape-wise, but otherwise look pretty similar.  I could do better though, so I plan to make the rest of the rainbow out of bears (a blue, a red, a yellow, and perhaps an orange) also.

Maybe they will be my first clay additions to my shop.. are they worthy?  I think they are, though I may just have to keep Chocolate Bear, and not just because he has a slight defect.

Last night I attempted a dragon holding his own teddy bear.  He is larger than anything else I have done, towering at about 3 inches high! Woah!

I have also learned an important lesson with him, which is that if the feet allow for ANY rocking, he will rock.  The back of his feet have a slight slant to him, which means if I put him down on a table he rocks back and forth for a second before coming to a stop on the flats of his feet.  Unfortunately because of this unwanted feature, when I was taking him out of the oven after his 2 hours of baking he fell forward onto his poor little snoot and ended up cracking a couple of spots on his belly.  It doesn’t make sense but it happened.

As a result you can see a tiny bit of glue along the area between the haunches on the left and the light blue belly.  Fortunately, one of the cracks was right along this edge and when I took these pictures I had Bake & Bond drying in that spot.  The other crack, which appeared along the center of his belly about an inch to the right of the first crack was easily sealed with Bake & Bond while he was still pliable (and very hot, ouch).   I shoved a bit of the Bake & Bond into that crack and pushed until it sealed, then gently wiped away any excess.  He then baked for another 30 minutes to set both glues.  Although I can tell these imperfections are there, you would have to look to find them.  I was hoping he would be the first in line to be sold in my Etsy store, but I can’t put him in there now because of his repairs!  I guess I’ll just have to try another one tonight.

One of my goals is not only to be able to create my own little works of art, but to be able to recreate them, and to do it accurately.  Since I had enough clay mixed up in the colors that I did my Pig with a Heart sculpture with, I decided he would be my first experiment.

Although I think that he could have come out better, I think he was a decent first try.  He is a bit bigger (likely due to the fact that I used the original pig as a measurement point for the second foil armature), his eyes are spaced slightly differently, his feet stitches are in a different spot, and his belly detailing isn’t as clean as Pig #1’s.  I also tried a different pattern on the patch on the heart (stripes instead of spots), but definitely ended up liking the first pattern better.

Despite my failings he is cleaner in general, due to the fact that I am practicing much more of an exact-o knife technique that I discovered by accident where I scrape the blade along the area where I see an embedded hair or dust particle in order to lift it (and a bit of the clay around it) to remove it.  I haven’t had much luck with alcohol and q-tips (the dust is too deep to come off easily and requires too much scrubbing) and I have not yet tried baby wipes, though that will be my next experiment.  The exact-o knife technique does require some smoothing of the clay afterwards, but so far it has been the best way to get those pesky particles off my pieces!

One of the things that I know that I struggle with is constantly jumping from one project to another.  I want to paint with watercolors, and I want to paint with acrylics, and I want to teach painting classes and I want to sculpt.  All of these things could feasibly work together, but I flit from one to the next with such frequency that I have to refresh myself on what works and what doesn’t work every time I do something new.

I need to focus.

I really enjoy the look of these little clay creatures that look like they are plush toys.  I know it’s not totally original – I remember when I was in high school my cousin made a magnet for my grandmother that was a cow with little fake “stitches” on it.  It was made from Fimo clay and it was really quite cute.  My hope is to begin to create something that is my own, and even if some of the elements have been done before that they are recognizable as my own work.

This “Pony Dragon” was my first experiment with adding a ‘patch’ to the clay in order to give it more of a plush doll appearance.  The entire sculpture was supposed to look a lot more dragon-y, but the head kind of ruins it because it looks so much like a My Little Pony from my youth.  A total accident.  I really like the Swarovski-gems-for-eyes look but I am not completely sold on it.

And not everything has to be a dragon, you know!  This little pig is my new favorite of my creations.  It seems like every time I make something it becomes my new favorite, but he feels soft and smooth in my hands, and I really enjoy his color scheme.  The eyes look good too, though when I held him up triumphantly to my boyfriend he referred to them as “dead inside”.  Phaw!  They are cute.

I am continuing on the “plushy” theme, you may see.  I like the stitches but I wonder if there is a better way to do them.  I briefly considered actually cutting tiny stitches from thin clay cane to adhere individually, but I fear that won’t turn out as lovely as it looks in my head.  Still, it may be worth a try.