“It’s thicker so I can, make volumes on it and then one more. Okay, let me move them. I’m gonna use my tool and then, two bolt tools and all the start with the bigger one. I don’t know why, just because I feel like I’m going to throw it to adjust the shape. Nope. See, let me try this, these tool. So now we know clouds, they have whatever shapes they want. So you can’t go wrong with the cloud. I think, I hope. And after I did this, I’m going to take the poll tool and just, you know, press a bit. So to give it like, you know, this, the weird texture here, so did you won’t be smooth. Okay. It doesn’t matter how you make it.”
“Okay. So now we’re going to give her a little bit of a fat rolls. Let’s see. I want to use Johnston three and one. It’s a good one to do. And what I like to do to just kind of score them in. So you’re not really cutting. You’re just like, kind of pressing it at an angle a bit. And then usually you do a couple of them as they go. Let’s see, I’m going to do some rights. I just want to push on that a little bit to make that look a little bit more elbowy and then up here, and then I like to do it right here, too, right on the elbow.”
“When you go to make something like this, that has a lot of little pointed edges. those are more easily achieved after it’s, after the clay is dry and I’ve got one here, that’s got some little ragged edges on it. And so I’m just going to start cleaning that up. And I’m just pressing down on a cutting mat with my knife.”
“When you’re doing bird. So I have used a lot of color on my birds. It’s a partly artistic license, partly because most birds, I mean, if you get the light hitting on them, just right. All the colors that show up in that bird are amazing. So here I’m putting on this color. And you can see why I tell you not to use your best brushes for doing this. Well, this does look a lot more jade when you put it on.”
“I’m going to start showing you some texture. I haven’t put his wings on him yet, but this part of the texture, I want to make sure I do before I get the wings on. Cause I want to make sure there’s plenty of texture underneath his wings, and I’m going to do this text. You’re very much like the idea on the thigh feathers, when I showed you how to do those. And so I, again, I’m using my wipe out tool. I’m using the pointy end and anytime I’m working on the top, I’m holding up the bottom. So I went my tool and I’m digging in deep because I want this texture to really show up.”
“And now I will, you know, I told you we were going to use a stone here, so I’m already going to see how it looks there. And this is a bead, so it has a hole in it, which is why I’m going to have to, hide that. Cool. So, I’m going to actually, carve some of the clearly, because I don’t, if I just push the stone into this area here, it’ll just expand on the sides and I don’t want that. So I’m just going to get, take out the tiny piece of this and, make it slightly larger using the bowl.”
“So we’re working on these feathers to make them so that you can, when I’m in the back end of your bird, or I, you know, sometimes I’ll make little buns for the hair. You can put photos wherever you want to that’s this is your choice, but this is how you do it. All right. So I sprayed this. Remember I’m putting my wire down. I want the wire delay as flatly as possible and laying that down. And then I’m taking my snake and I am laying it on top here. I want this up a little higher because I’m going to pull this down and I could use the extra link up on top to make sure that that wire gets covered.”
Learn more about the course here: https://www.curiousmondo.com/sculpting-fiber-clay-course
“I bet that’s quite a common problem to have, right. That is the tricky part with the inset eyes. Like the, the hand-painted ones are tricky to paint, but they’re super easy to sculpt in and draw. So the sculpting process with it is really easy that way. but the inset eyes are super easy cause you don’t have to paint them. So you don’t have to deal with any of like the tiny little pupil. But they can be trickier to get looking in the same direction or to not be like walleyed or, so those kinds of the each had their own challenges. So you kind of just have to play around with both of them and get used to how they are.
“So the first thing I’m going to do on my nice smooth piece of clay is I’m going to just put this off to the side here and now I’m going to trace around that actual actually that’s remind me that that’s upside down to you. So turn it around here. If I put it right in the middle of the clay, then I, then I’ve, you know, have to roll it out again. And I want to keep all that because I have all these other leaves and stems I’m going to put on there. So I’m just going to take a ballpoint pen and go over my bird with a ballpoint pen. In terms of pressure. It’s the same pressure as if you were riding on it. You’re writing on a paper, but you also, you know, you can poke through it. So, and I probably will do that a couple of times. “
In this Fiber Clay Sculpting Class, you’ll learn to make a bird out of Fiber Clay, an easy to use medium that doesn’t have to be fired. I use only four shapes, a ball, snake, potato, and pancake, to teach you to create sculptures you’ll be amazed you built.
“What we’re going to do is take one of the leaves and just place it on the clay. Actually, you know what, I’m going to place all of them right now. And I’m going to apply some pressure to the paper. No idea why, but lately my lifts have become kind of crunchy. I’m afraid that when I tried to take them off the clay, they might break now. I really hope it will happen. But, I know it might, so I’m going to apply, some pressure on the entire leaf and then I will just take them off the clay.”
To get started here, we’re going to just make a simple flour. And when you roll the clay out, it’s really important to always lift it first, before you start doing anything, because it’s so sticky that it’s going to want to stick to this plastic piece. And if you start cutting things out and you haven’t lifted the clay, they’re going to be stuck. So you want to always pull the clay away from the plastic. I’m just going to use a little, a little box top here to cut a circle, and I’m going to make a little flower shape out of this circle, going to actually do two. I’m going to take the top of, of a glue stick, which just happens to be about the right size for a smaller circle. It’s going to go inside. So there we have these two little pieces.
You don’t have to worry about air bubbles. You don’t have to worry about slipping score. All those things that you will know about. And another thing is we can fix anything. And so that’s one thing I really want to impress on you. And I’ll be talking about it throughout the class, because if you don’t like something, we can fix it. If something cracks, we can fix it. It’s not like regular clay when you’re scoping. And if it dries out, you’re done, you can’t eat. You don’t, you can’t use it anymore with regular clay. When you’re sculpting, after you get your piece done yet the hollow it all out and make sure that there’s air holes for the air to escape in your fire. Right? Because we’re not firing. We don’t have to worry about that. Plus even if you were firing it. So it’s nylon fibers are burning out, it’s leaving air holes for the air to escape in the piece and you don’t have to worry about hollowing it out or air air holes or whatever. It just fires up just fine. So, those are some of the things I love about this play, and we’ll talk about it more as I go on, because there’s so much more, that I can tell you.
One thing you should keep in mind when cutting your clay is that, your polymer clay cover should be just a little bit smaller than the actual, notebook. And that is for multiple reasons. The most important is that, on this side, on the left side of, to the spine, the notebook needs to stay uncovered so it can open properly, which is why I suggested to, spend some quality time with your notebook, play with it and, see how it works. See how it looks when it’s open and determine how much space it needs, next to the spine in order to be able to open properly. So you can actually write this side of it because I get as a point of a notebook to actually have something. I mean, to be able to, write or drawing side of it, preferably without damaging the cover. Right? Other than that, I’m also going to need some extra space on all the sides of the notebook. And that is because I like to add the upgraded a border. So basically my notebook, we have two border. One that will be placed inside of this polymer clay background that we are cutting right now and the other one will be placed outside of it. So this is why I need, enough space on all sides. Moreover, because we need to leave that, uncovered space, on the left side of the notebook, I guess it’s more aesthetically pleasing to have the same amount of free space on all sides. Learn more about the course here: https://www.curiousmondo.com/dragonfly-notebook-cover-course
I used two firing schedules. I used a slump schedule. And a slump schedule is hot enough to take a bottle from this to this. So that is, it’s hard enough to bend the glass based on gravity and heat. It’s going to get a little, a little squishy and gravity is going to pull it flat, But not hot enough to go all the way flat. So let me show you, this is a fuse schedule and this is the other one I use frequently. Okay. So that same bottle, that’s the difference between a slump and a fuse. And interestingly enough, that is only 150 degrees difference. So a lot of stuff is happening in that 150 degrees.
So you start with your elbows and this is the trickiest part because you’re first going all kinds of directions. You make sure to pin the elbow first because these parts lining up is the most important. They are not actually elbows. They look like elbows and that’s why I’m saying it. And you want to make sure both first your edges are right next to each other, and then I’m just working that fur down. So it’s not going to be in my seam. And just make sure when you’re pinning you pin on the same side. And now you can start working your way down the legs in the belly. I usually pin the belly next, just because it’s usually a little bit cleaner. You just make sure you’re first going down on this body part. I usually pan a little bit more than I need to just to make sure that they’re all gonna stay where they’re supposed to go when you’re sewing. So the reason I trimmed that one little piece is because I have a seam right here and that for that was showing is not going to be inside the scene. So I just wanted to trim it. So it’s out of my way.
