Making a maquette with clay

Had a pretty good weekend, the weather was lovely and I got a rare opportunity to give myself a much needed mani-pedi, no polish this time though.  And was thinking about this skull.

I'm having issue with the back of the skull.  Something about it just doesn't look right.  The face is going well, but it looks like a completely separate piece, not a complete skull.  So, I thought I would try the maquette again.  But because the playdough worked so well last time, this time I went to the local dollar store (Yay Dollarama!!) and bought myself some clay.

And it's GLUTEN FREE!  This really wasn't an issue since I wasn't intending to eat it, and really, why would clay have flour in it anyway?!

I also bought some clay modelling tools ($5 - Michael's - cheaper at Curry's but a MUCH longer drive).  I referenced how to make a skull out of clay - thank you Google, and started work this morning.  As it turns out, I have absolutely NO skill in working with clay.  I thought this would be as simple as playdough, but clay is a much more resistant material.  Don't get me wrong, that's exactly what I wanted, but it tended to dry out much more quickly than I expected.  The tools were awesome though.  I could get the detail and definition I wanted (with my limited skills) with moderately little effort, getting into crevices my fingers couldn't reach.  Here's the result so far.

Looks creepy don't he?!  You can see the partial drawing in the background - I obviously have a LOT of work still to do, but I'm beginning to see what may be going on in the drawing already.

After working with it for about an hour or so I decided it was time to put it away.  It was getting drier by the minute and harder to work with.  I figured I didn't want it to dry completely since I want to come back to it later, so I thought I'd try the old trick of a damp paper towel in a ziplock bag to keep it moist.  We'll see how that works out.

I needed a break, so refreshed with some juice and cleaned my desk of clay.  I pulled out the crocuses again to continue the line drawing (no pic today) for the remainder of the day.

Here are the links I used for how to make a skull out of clay:

• www.ehow.com/how_6223673_make-human-skull-out-clay.html
• http://www.ehow.com/how_7804155_build-human-skull.html

If anyone has any tips on how to work with clay or how to make a skull out of clay, I'd be really interested to hear them!

Kitty Complete!

I took a vacation day today as my 5 year old was home (PD day).  So I took the extra time to push things further along and finally finished the kitty image.  Well, I think it's done anyway.  I can't come up with any more damage I can do to it - so I declare it DONE!

To finish things off, I worked on the darks and lights of the fur to make it seem silky and shiny.  I was trying for very healthy and luxurious fur.  Then I sprayed the entire drawing with a workable fixative.  This allows me to work on the topmost highlights and whiskers without smudging up the work so far. (Warning about workable fixative - be sure that you are not going to want to do any more erasing on the original work as you can only add to the pic after "fixing" it.  You can erase anything you add, but nothing below that.)

So, I sprayed it thoroughly (it really sucks to think you've "fixed" a picture and then find out otherwise after the fact) and then applied the whiskers and some extra white to some of the highlights.  I haven't done the final spray to protect the image yet, but here's the finished piece:

If you'd like to see the steps it took to get to this final image, check out my past blog postings with "Kitty" titles.

Do you know anyone with a black cat that would like a drawing like this?  Or perhaps someone who really likes black cats?  Send me a message and we can talk ;)

I had some time left over so I thought I'd start tackling the skull image again.  As I said before, I was having trouble with some of the shading aspects.  I've been reading James Gurney's book "Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist" and he said that one of the best ways to deal with this type of problem is to make a maquette.  Essentially this is a model of your subject, usually made from clay or some other sculpting medium.  Since I didn't have any clay, I used some of my kids' play dough (home made):

One of the disadvantages of using play dough is that it's very soft and squishy so it doesn't hold the shape well or for long while you're holding it.  The advantage to doing a maquette, I found, was that I could see how the image should be in 3D.  It helped me make the image more accurate around the eyes and cheek bones.  I still have a bit of work to do on this one, mostly shading, but hopefully not too much more. This is what the drawing looks like now (can you see the name in the skull?):

Spring is definitely in the air in Kitchener!  I took some very nice pics of the crocuses growing in my garden and I may do a painting of one of them next.

James Gurney is the creator/author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books.  I've added Gurney's books to my recommended booklist.  If you're interested in checking out his blog, you can find it here: www.gurneyjourney.blogspot.ca/