Today I have for you my third polymer clay sculpted figure of 2017. Meet James. Isn’t he sweet little boy? If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you may recognize the butterfly as the same one I made several of to send to the Into the Forest art installation.
That’s the fun thing about caning: you can make them in whatever size you need.
James is the fourth project in Maureen Carlson’s neighborhood kids series in her book, How to Make Clay Characters. Her little guy is named playful Pete and he is holding marbles in his hand. I’m trying to make sure my figures are different from Maureen’s creations, even if just a little bit.
I have discovered that I love doing the details on the clothes, shoes, the hair and the props, but find doing the hands and faces more difficult. Probably because they are fiddly and require precision, lol.
I’ve also discovered that I can be quite the expert at finding anything else to do when it comes time to working on the hands and faces! However once I plunged in and made myself do them I was pleased to find that they all came out just a little bit better than on the previous figures. In fact I didn’t squish up and re-roll James’ face once! (Something I did several times on all of the other characters.) So that’s encouraging, I slowly seem to be getting the hang of this. Which, of course, is the whole point of practice.
If you would like to make the butterfly cane that I used you will find a free tutorial for it by Claire Wallis at CraftArtEdu.
Hope you have a creative day!
Watch the James-Looking on in Wonder-2017 Polymer Clay Figure Challenge #3 360° video at YouTube.
Oh, he’s my favorite so far! That’s AMAZING work on the sweater.
Next time you are in the produce aisle check and see if they have heads of garlic in fine mesh bags. Those mesh bags are what made the texture. 🙂