Online Sculpting Class

It's winter and that means that we are remodeling again.   That also means I don't have much time for my hobbies, however, I have managed to squeeze in a wonderful online sculpting class with Deb Wood.    It was sculpting the female head using Polymer Clay.  She did a great job teaching this class with lots of illustrations and personal critiques.   I am going to share some of my photos with you.   There were only 4 lessons so I'll show progressive shots from each lesson.  

Lesson 1 --We learned the basic head shape, feature placement, eyes, lips and nose.   Lots to do in this lesson.   It was very difficult to keep the clay clean and lint free.   As you can see I didn't succeed in doing that.  In later pictures you will see that I cleaned her up a bit but may still have to do an all over paint after she is baked.   
 

Lesson 2 --In this lesson we refined her features, i.e., we added eyelids, nostrils and brows.  Starting to look a little better here. She still has a long way to go before she's ready to meet the public....more cosmetic surgery needed!!

Lesson 3--This lesson focused on more refinement and eyebrows.   I found it hard to refine her features without distorting something else I wasn't working on.   A constant battle!!!

Lesson 4--Lesson 4 was all about EARS!!  I found this to be the most difficult as they are so small and you have to sculpt them on the side of her head and not squash the other features.  In addition, you have to try to get them to look alike.   After many tries, I finally had a pair that weren't too embarrassing.   They are a little larger than I would like and sit a little far from her face.   However, when she has hair....who will know.   I had many close calls with distorting her other features so I'm not going to risk taking them off again.   

My next step is to try to smooth her out a little more before I bake her.  After her head is baked I will add a little more scalp to improve her head shape a bit.  After that I re-bake and then paint her features.   If I like her I will use her on one of my future cloth dolls.   Wish me luck!!