Not Taking Care of Business

I have so many things hanging over my head. Today I finally got a few of them done, but the past few days were not so "productive" in the keeping-the-household-together sense of the word. The clay was calling, and I answered! That first humanoid fairy presented a problem that I couldn't get out of my mind, namely how to sculpt the head and face. I read a very helpful tutorial on http://www.ooakguild.com/ on sculpting lips. The example face in the tutorial was so sweet! I was energized and decided to try it.

Hours later, after starting all over again several times, I finally got something I could live with, but I'm not really happy with it. I was trying for cute and sweet and got vaguely humanoid but wierd. I was especially having trouble with the eyes - it takes great care and perhaps a bit of luck to get the eyeballs oriented correcting, both facing the same direction.

By the way, I was using very nice tiny glass eyes on wire from http://www.glasseyesonline.com/, but they're pretty expensive - over $4 per pair compared to $.85 for the glass animal eyes. There was another tutorial on the ooakguild website on making eyes, and I think I'll give it a try. The tutorial has you build the polymer clay eyeballs on the head of a pin. The pin would be handy for holding the eyeball while working on it, but I don't find a wire necessary for holding the eyeball in the head since the eyelids perform that function very nicely.

Anyway, not completely happy with the head, I began on the body. I should have stopped at that point because I was pretty tired and was rushing a bit. As a result, I was careless modelling the arms and it shows! But I like the pose and the general idea of the piece. The next day I made the base, fox, and wings and finished assembly. I tried really hard to get the fairy standing straight, but her stance came out leaning a bit. My "fix" was to put her on a slightly uneven base than would straighten her out. It mostly worked. From most angles she looks fine, but leans a bit it you look at her the wrong way!

Speaking of eyes, I tried another face and used plain black beads. I got a rather interesting result - something that looks like a cross between a human and a monkey.

On a different subject, one of the cat trees I ordered arrived today and I put it together this afternoon. The cats are having a great time playing in the empty box!