In the vein of reigniting the passion for things I used to love but stopped caring about due to the slow crushing death of dreams by working, I recently played with sculpey again for the first time since college.
Back in high school, I took a billion art classes. While I had some nice creations in regular art, and did my best to make bowls on a pottery wheel while staring at my way-too-hot teacher, I randomly picked up sculpey around 11th grade and showed promise at making sculptures. More importantly, I had a lot of fun playing with it, and made some pretty decent characters. When I was cleaning the room I grew up in recently, I stumbled on a bunch of my old creations. Here's a sweet gargoyle made of clay:
I made a hunchback guy out of sculpey, but dropped him and he exploded. He used to be carrying a scythe. Here he is in pieces:
Here's a comic character I made up/stole from Rob Leifeld, named Berry. He had alien antennae that broke off, but other than that, just a massive jaw, buckteeth and boxing gloves. And he was named after a really awkward kid I went to high school with.
This one was pretty stupid. An alligator with a sombrero on. Why not?
I also made a Mega Man, which was huge, and of course, broke. His head flew right off. I was pretty psyched about this in high school.
This was probably my all time achievement- a guy getting attacked by a shark.
I made it in 2 pieces, and I love that you can take him out to look at the shark head.
look at the dust on the waves!
After not touching sculpey for the first 2 years of college, I randomly attempted to get back into it and made this guy, who I think rules. I find it interesting too- that I didn't touch sculpey and somehow got way better with it.
So randomly around November, like 12 years since I last touched it, I started thinking about sculpey again. I don't know why- it was just something I wanted to be creative with again.
I kind of thought about it when I couldn't think of what to get Rich's sister Heidi for Christmas. We don't normally give each other anything, but last year she gave me a giant cow skull she found, which was pretty awesome. I wanted to do something for her, and randomly thought of making her a sculpey version of one of her own creations.
She makes stuffed animals among other things, and they're generally pretty weird. Cuddle Zombies, Amputee Bunnies and Narcoleptic Owls are her most popular creations. Here's what the owls end up looking like:
(P.S. you can buy these from her here.)
So anyway, I thought making a small sculpey version was probably the easiest way to get back into sculpey- it probably wouldn't be too hard, and sculpey creations make great gifts. The bear I made my mom, frog I made my grandmother and cow I made my dad are still floating around somewhere. When I was home for Thanksgiving, I started looking up sculptures on the internets to get inspiration. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse- it made me want to make stuff pretty badly, but also instantly defeated me since the stuff I saw on a simple "sculpey sculpture" search was absolutely absurd and I knew the chances of me being able to do anything that detailed were pretty slim.
BUT, it made me really want to get with it. I remembered that I very well may have some sculpey left over from college and went to a drawer I thought it may be in. It was, and there was about 4 times more of it than I thought there would be. Perfect.
I decided to make the owl out of different colors (instead of painting it) since I always thought that looked better. I drew a little sketch, figured out colors (I went with some easter hues), and got to work.
I don't remember sculpey being this hard to sculpt. This stuff was like a rock. Clearly, sitting for 12 years isn't the best for sculpey. But, I got the basic shape pretty quickly.
I made basic stuff out of the main color just to see how it looked. I gave it a rating of "odd, but close enough."
I made the eyes first. Just simple balls of sculpey mashed down, then strips of purple around them,
and polishing, both with fingers and some not-that-great wooden tools I've had for years.
It looked about right.
Then I made the other, fought with what color his stomach would be, and threw everything on for another "how does it look?" test. It looked pretty much like a narcoleptic owl.
I stuck everything on, attached the beak with a piece of toothpick, then used tools and a toothpick to give him some texture. I fought with making stitching-esque marks around his eyes, and in the end decided it looked the best that way, AND it helped keep the eyes attached. I tried something I read on the internet, which was rubbing the feathers texture with a wet paintbrush (to get rid of excess pieces), but it only kind of worked. I'm still not sure how that's supposed to work.
Anyway, the finished product came out as I expected- not life changing, but a pretty solid depiction of a narcoleptic owl, and more importantly, a very solid reintroduction to sculpey.
he's soooo tired
She loved it, everyone that saw it thought it was pretty rad, and I was happy. He went to a happy home, and hopefully he can get some sleep.
I then started up what would turn into quite the epic project- my sculpture of The Red Claw for Rich, of which I took over 70 pictures of the creation process. Stay tuned for that post!
currently listening to: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis- "The Vs. EP"
No comments:
Post a Comment