If you want to keep working on the project, cover it up. It is important that it dries evenly, and clay you added on later, or exposed later will dry slower. Even drying means the sculpture won’t crack, or distort oddly. Once you are done, uncover it. Unless you are trying to get a formed pot to the right hardness to be burnished, then you let it dry a bit, rub it in the same direction endlessly, and keep it covered until you are done polishing it. In my art class the teacher then wrapped the pots in newspaper and foil and pit fired them, they came out shiny and black. (Burnished pottery isn’t glazed and can’t hold water btw.) It looks like there might be some articles on clay sculpting and various ideas on how to get your project fired on this page. (One article I glanced at mentioned that the artist took his works to a ceramics shop and paid them to fire them.) You’ll want a very good lotion to apply after cleaning up for the day, clay dries skin.
Well, I tried sculpting for the first time tonight, making a small figurine of one of my dogs. (Figured that’d be easy.) I learned a couple of things.
One, if I want to continue with this, I’ll have to get some more tools. I bought a small kit, but it didn’t have the fine edges that I needed.
Two, I’ll have to make something larger if I want to show detail. I spent a good twenty minutes getting my dog’s eyebrows just right and you can’t even really tell.
Three, I need to fine out the way professionals make textures. Hubby thought that the dog needed fur, so I hatched the body all over and while it worked for a “first try”, I wasn’t satisfied with it.
Four, I need to learn to watch where I rest my hands. I had her eyes done perfectly, just the way I wanted them. (I discovered that if I poked two holes with the point in my kit I could make a neat “iris” effect. Managed to do it once, and never managed to get it right again.) Then, I rested the edge of my hand against the dog’s head while I was working on the back of the body. Big mistake, as it turns out.
So, anyway, I wanted to show you guys very first sculpture.
I hoped you could give me some constructive criticism. To me, the whole thing looks too stiff. I guess I could call it “Bean a la Sphinx”, but that wasn’t really what I was going for. I should have bent the leg closest to the eye, and the leg below is far too long. But as a very first try, I’d say not too bad.
Suggestions?
Stamps. Find something with the texture you want Make a clay disk with a short clay handle. Take an impression with the other side of the disk. Fire this and you have a stamp you can push on clay to make the texture you want. You’ll want to make several to avoid having an obvious repeating pattern in the texture.
Alternately, you can find an object or material with the negative of the texture you want and press it on the clay.
Looking at your pics-
I think you want either a garlic press, a pasta press, or syringes. These give you clay spaghetti of varying thicknesses. You then cut short lengths and attach them. You can also buy clay extruders (basically metal syringes with adjustable openings). When dealing with things like fine hair, drying slowly in a moist environment is important.
BTW
Prevent your dog from eating the clay. Clay is generally harmless, except that the silica causes terrible constipation.
In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with pine for a beginner just learning his chops. I started carving with a two by four and a Case pocket knife. I learned about making corners without splitting off the part I wanted to leave in place. After going through a lot of bandages, I learned to keep both hands behind the blade. I learned that glue will fix some mistakes. An older carver told me, “If a piece doesn’t look right, you probably haven’t taken enough off.” He’s right. If a face looks more like a block of wood than a face, you have more work to do.
A basic set of a few chisels and gouges won’t cost you much. (Insert price-gouging joke here.)
When you carve a wooden dog, remember to leave a little bark.
I am about as artistic as a bull-frog, but I can do this:
Chip Carving
All it takes is a couple of extremely sharp knives (cost about $20-$30 each), a compass to mark out your design (or use templates), and some practice. You can do it in your living room. There are instructions. Buy the videos, they have very good information).
I clicked on *Uzi’s link expecting a site dedicated to the artistic cutting of potato chips. I doubt I was the only one who thought that.
A couple of years ago, while on a camping holiday in Dorset(UK), we visited lulworth cove; the beach is composed of pebbles and shingle of mixed composition; some of the large pebbles are actually smoothed pieces of limestone. I happened to notice how fine-grained and even textured some of these were, so I picked up a nice flattish oval one about the right size to be held comfortably in the hand.
I did not have any proper tools with me, but a rummage in the glovebox of the car turned up a miniature watchmaker’s screwdriver - it had a nice hardened tip, so I set to work relief-carving the pebble.
The result is still fairly crude, but I’m happy with it - it’s nothing remarkable, but nothing less than I’d hoped for.
here is what it looks like.
