Making a stone golem

  I had decided to make a fantasy creature for my brothers Christmas present, i drew inspiration from lots of images on the internet  and from other polymer clay artists; which i I will list at the end. The first thing I consider when making a figure is how big it will be. Small figures can be made just out of clay with no problem, if it's going to be a large one it's best to make an armature with foil and wire. This adds structure and support so it won't break under its own weight, ensures the clay bakes evenly and can save you lots of money of clay.   

 I drew a very rough sketch in the size I wanted it, then started on the armature. Taking bendable wire, just over twice the length I wanted, for the legs i made a loop in the bottom and then twisted the wire back on its self. i left the ends open so i could push them into the body to join them.

 For the body I rolled tin foil into a ball and added extra until i had a rough shape of what i wanted. Remember you'll be adding clay over the top so don't go crazy with shaping it at this stage. I flattened the loops on the feet and added foil to them as well, the arms were made the same way.

 Once i was happy with the shape of everything I covered the foil and wire in masking tape, this makes it easier for the clay to adhere. The head is a ball of foil with a small piece of wire in it to attach it to the body.

 The base was 6mm plywood covered in polymer clay. Looking back i spend too much time adding detail as at the time i wan't sure how I would be covering it. More foil for the boulders. 

Something i always do after baking the clay is add acrylic paint, this adds depth. I work watered down black acrylic over the whole sculpture and wipe away excess until i'm happy with the colour, using a wet tissue to take any paint that has dried.  It's easy to add texture when working with the clay even if you don't have specially designed tools. Tooth picks, foil/ plastic wrap, hard paintbrushes or mascara wands are a few things you can use. Make sure you only use these for clay work.

 The image I'd been most inspired by had moss growing over most of the back and shoulders, I decided not to make that much moss but instead make succulent plants with small amounts of clay moss in the cracks and joins of the stone.The plants are all made from a combination of translucent and green clay. 

Once painted i dry brushed white acrylic over the plants to highlight the shapes . Where the wood was emerging from the stone i added more clay to give the illusion it was it's skeleton. This is also where the plants were most.

      

Below are the images and videos I've been inspired by.

http://andrewmcintoshart.deviantart.com/art/Garden-Golem-501287288 definitely the main source of inspiration, this artist deviant art is full of amazing work and is well worth taking the time to look through it.

http://bayardwu.deviantart.com/art/Guardian-397633848  really magnificent posture and shape

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5LvfEeKSwU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IjDhItMgJA Stephanie Kilgast makes a variety of polymer clay sculptures that inspire a lot of my work. She makes some amazing polymer clay crystals that i will be incorporating into future pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-u8ZAyg-E8&list=PL4EB69999395DEEA7&index=56  and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGKpbjoorY&list=PL4EB69999395DEEA7&index=58 this youtuber makes amazing art with polymer clay, using soft pastels and paint to really had an extra level to the clay.

When developing as an artist it's important to branch out and find what works for you, by looking at other artist you can find styles and techniques that work for you adding your own touch.

Miniature Cafe Kit Part 2

Welcome back

To ensure that the base was fixed evenly I used different objects to weight it down in the four corners. For most of this project I used tacky glue, it is a great consistency when it comes out of the bottle allowing you to work with what your gluing together but once its dry it holds really well.

This was a little shelf that holds a plant, I glued the pieces imposition so it would later attach to the wall better. The tape help the back in position while everything dried

When making pieces this small its better to use a very small amount of glue for a few reasons; it dries quicker, to don't get over spill that needs cleaning up later and generally things don't slide apart.

The kit came with templates for the leaves and paper to use, but I already had leaves cut from different colored card and some small flowers. I'm really happy with how it came out.

If you'd like a more in depth tutorial on the flowers or vine let me know and I'll try and make one

The bricks for the out side were probably my favorite bit, I painted a piece of sturdy card with different shades of brown, red and yellow acrylic paint. Using a brush and sponge to create texture, going over different areas lightly with different colors to mimic the random color mix on bricks

Once the paint dried I covered it with Mod-Pog and cut them into slips making sure they were all the same width.

I then cut two thirds of the strips into "brick" sizes, this was based off of deign given in the kit. Which was probably two different sizes. I left a few of the strips uncut so that I could cut them at any size, I knew I would need to do this because of the nature of brick patterns and the size of the floor.

I'm happy with how it came out but I think if I were to do this again I would make the individual bricks smaller and try to make a more interesting pattern with them

The green beam was glued on after the bricks, this meant I didn't have to fussy cut around it

These are the chairs that came with the kit, if you'd like to see them being made you can find the link to my video walk through at the bottom of this blog

I decided the only way to hide the wires from the lighting would be to make some sort of wooden corner. I made it out of wooden drinks stirrers, this was another difficult this to keep in place while it dried.

Most things are assembled here and put into place, I did end up not keeping any of the outside furniture. I just wasn't happy with how they looked but I may add something later, probably not furniture but more plants.

Once I got my head round how this display unit went together it was fairly easy to put together.

                               

Once the shelves were in and dry enough I decorated them with a bit of lace then filled them with the cakes.

The cakes were all included in the kit, they weren't the best quality but I kept them anyway as I didn't want to make any for now. When I make my own room I will defiantly make my own.











That's it for this blog post, thanks for reading
If you'd like to see a short video of me making this feel free to visit my Youtube video..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDr90DMNkaA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCabGMVS8nrvr0DKTbQaBaHw

Miniature Cafe Kit Part 1

I received a miniature kit for Christmas as i'd been looking into buying one. They include everything you'll need to make the whole thing; even glue, tweezers and a small screw driver if it has a music box.

Mine has instructions written in English, some don't but all the steps have pictures as well so they are easy to follow.
The booklet came with wall paper and flooring designs but I chose to use my own paper for the walls and make wooden flooring inside and bricks outside instead.

The walls are nice and thick, I think they're make of mdf.
I didn't use the glue they include as I was more comfortable using my own.
To neaten all the edges I used a nail file, this also got rid of any overflow of glue.

With all of the elements I tried to lay them out with what they going to be used with, so here I've put all the window frames near where they needed to be glued.

This meant that I didn't use the wrong pieces, not so much with the window pieces but a lot of the chair and display pieces were very similar .

This window caused a little fuss, it came in two pieces the larger of which was very snug making it difficult to fit in and not buckle. The bottom ledge had to be adjusted anyway but this meant that not all of it was left green as it had to be sanded down

Because I was making wooden flooring i decided to glue the walls together first so i could trace exactly how much space I had. This would make it less fiddly when making the floor.

I used the floor design they included to ensure the walls were straight. I didn't use this as a template for my flooring as it would be larger than the available space, if you can see the design goes under the walls.

The "roof" has a viewing window, they provide plastic to cover it but no template so I had to very carefully cut round the edges to make it fit snugly. I also found it difficult to glue this down, thus why there are multiply objects holding it down.

This was a small fence at the back of the outside area, I didn't glue the top and bottom bars perfectly so when I added the middle I needed to use a hair tie to hold it together while the glue dried

The inside flooring was made of wooden drinks stirrers, cut into different lengths to make it more realistic. I used tacky glue for this, the brand i used dries slowly enough that i could adjust them if needed for a while but held them in place if not.

I left it overnight to dry then sanded the surface to get rid of any glue residue and even everything out. Then cut off the overhang, it was easier for me to have the pieces go longer than needed then trim once dry instead of cutting then perfectly to size first.

The lighting was a LED and you use different beads to make the shade, some of the openings were very small so feeding two wires through was a tad difficult.

Overall the lighting was the fiddliest part as you had to attach it in such a way so it could not be seen, it was difficult to glue the wire to the plastic.

This was my set up, not ideal for filming as the camera shakes a lot and there's no place to set things aside to dry while working on other things.











These make a raised edge for the whole piece, they came with a brick print out but i decided to leave the white as it makes it more of a display item

Two of them have ledges, this is made if easier to glue the base on

One piece did brake but it was easy to fix. I was surprised that this was the only broken piece as everything was packaged very snugly and a few of the wooden components were fragile.

I didn't use all of the print outs they included, they had things like magazines, posters and leaves for a small plant, because they were blurred but the menu was cute and really detailed.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for part two














If you'd like to see a short video of me making this feel free to visit my Youtube video..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDr90DMNkaA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCabGMVS8nrvr0DKTbQaBaHw

Fantasy Snail Creature

This is the armature in the shell. I ended up changing the shell because this one broke.
















I used glow in the dark polymer clay for the entire body. Whilst sculpting the body i gently pressed the clay against the shell so when it came time to glue it in clay i had a outline of where to put it.

I added the head added two little holes for where the antenna would go then baked the whole thing

The base was just a scarp piece of wood that i glued moss too.

I formed more clay round some wire and pushed them into clay, adjusting them to look right.

The paint didn't go quite right but it's still a work in progress.

Polymer Clay Man eating plant- Part 2

Once everything was baked, painted and dry i assembled all the pieces in the pot. For the roots i used tacky glue and for the stem i used hot glue....a lot of hot glue.

After assembling everything my hands were stained green, so i tried rubbing a bit of the paint off but it didn't work and green paint was still coming off

This was because i had mixed up my tubes of acrylic and watercolours!

I contemplated using pva to coat it but figured it would either make the paint bleed or eventually peal off.

So in the end i used a glossy craft varnish which fixed the paint problem and gave it a nice shine

I did buy matte mod podge a couple of days later which would have worked.

I added a small amount of moss just to cover up the hot glue and joins before adding leaves

The leaves are just felt that i painted with acrylic paint and more of the gloss varnish.

Before adding the gloss i really didn't like how they looked, probably because the contrasted so much with the body.

While the gloss was still tacky i put the leaves in round pots to give them some shape and once completely dried i hot glued them into place

Finally i added more moss and tacky glue the leaves to the pot to keep them in place.

And that's finished

Thanks for ready