Carving and Molding

Functional Toy - made of carved plaster and painted with acrylic gouache.

I am a bit upset that the hole was never photographed but I am sure I have like one hour to get this page set up with everything so eh. The goal was to make this replicate an old Native American clay toy. A simple thing that can be rolled and manipulated with the string (which is threaded through hole). This art work is a personal favorite and I would love to make more of them and refine the overall process. For this one I accidently used clay carving tools for most of it: a shovel looking tipped one did 90% of the initial carves leading to the design choice and surprisingly a semi rough bristle brush (that one might use to clean a woodwind instrument or baby bottle) to create the soft hour glass pinch in the middle.

Looked at from any angle one can see the earthen tones of dark red, dark green and brown. All done with acrylic gouache. Once the desired color mixture was found a few drops of water were added to the paint to make the color spread better while being more absorbent to the plaster than plain paint. There is a plan to add a glazed finish in order to make it watertight for real life play and use. This piece was daunting at first but soothing to work on.

Working with oil clay was pretty simple and fun once I acquired my plethora of tools. Many had shape I never thought to associate with molding clay works. Both of these little molds are smaller than 5inx5inx5in and took less than a class period to make. Looking forward for these items there is nothing that will come out of the fairy garden mold as I have a ceramic version already. When it comes to the WHY? I am using it as a moquette and is currently in the process of being turned into a massive 22in long x 14in tall x 11in wide sculpture out of wood. 

I had tools with round balls at the ends which I used to make the eyes and mouth on the WHY? mold. Then there were really long needle looking things in the carving kit that I used to make the Fairy Garden grass and cobble stone details. When it came to making the blood soaked eyes for the face I kept messing up and having to start over. In the end I would up indenting the area first with a droplet shaped tool pressing harder up top and angling the outward as to form the blood drops. After I took the rounded tool to empress eyeball letting the clay push outward around the tip of the tool to get my desired shape.