cornbread

Here is something easy to sculpt that requires little time and lets you practice on some symmetry. It is a 2 step process that is less than 30 minutes. The instructions are for a hedgehog, but is easily convertible to make a star trek tribble. Start with a bent wire armature. This keeps the putty in place as you are pushing it around. How big? As big as you want. Make your 2nd one smaller. Do one to get that hang of it. This one is about 1/2 inch long, the wire is 1/4 inch bend Mix your putty. Make it about the right size, then squeeze it so it is the same length, just twice as long, then fold it over the armature. Make sure it encapsulates the wire. use your fingers to push it into an approximate shape. A hedgehog kinda looks like a football with no pointy ends. Use a tool to lift the bottom off the cork so it has more of a football shape and less of a breadloaf shape Wet your fingers and smooth out the putty. Wet fingers rubbed back and forth works like sandpaper on wood. A wet tool can work on the underside Take your wet fingers and "pinch" the nose of the hedgehog, Then rub the pinched ridge on the top of the face. Hedgehog look forward Use you needle tool to "draw" the outline of the eyes and nose. I tend to do more of a series of dots to start and then connect the dots. Try to keep the eyes lined up with each other Outline the face with an exacto blade. Use tiny pushing in motions with the point of the blade to start making the spines Continue drawing spines with the knife. Do not draw the same line over and over. It should have a random pattern of spines that all point backwards. If you make a mistake, just push more lines in. A final option is to lift up the nose. Just slide the knife under the nose and lift. Now let this cure until solid. At this point you have all the information to make a tribble STEP 2 THE EARS-------- Roll a piece of putty into a rope and wrap it over the head Use the needle tool to push the center of the ear to the head and then use your knife to cut the sides of the ear. Leave a little putty next to the needle tool mark for the edge of the ear. Shape the ear into a triangle, and then lift the point up. DONE! See? Easy. The painted one at the top of the post was made by my 9 year old son. His first hedgehog. You can do this too!

SO I have recently started playing with grey stuff. I made a starting piece and let it dry( cure). The next day I mixed more and stuck it to the original piece and it would not stick. I did not use any Vaseline on the original. I ended up using some green stuff instead and that kinda stuck. Is my stuff getting old? when I mix it, it doesn't really stick to my fingers. Any thoughts?

So this started out as a anomalocaris, but soon changed to have to work on the cork. They normally have grabber "arms" and swim freely in the water. Mine is more of a aggressive roly poly with claws. The inspiration looks like this/ But with no source material in front of me when I did this, mine looked more like this . Either way, it was fun to do a monster

So just a quick try at making it smaller. The lines on the cork is 1/4 of an inch. The new one is in front

So the star tonight was the hedgehog. I heard lots of oohhs and "it so tiny", but scale wise, it is 3 times the actual scale size. So I guess this is a GIANT hedgehog. In real life, they are 6 inches long And there is another garden gnome

So I was taking pictures of harry gnome and tossed the jawa in even though he is not done. When I was researching Garden Gnomes on line, the Jawa lawn ornament showed up and I thought " Hey , I can do THAT". Well, I still need to figure out how to do loose fabric folds and he still needs hands and pouches on the bandoleer, but I enjoy seeing what other people do , so I am sharing. More to follow as the work gets done

I use this kind of set up for the big animals. I have a couple of them with different inserts for the middle seperator

With all these comparison pictures, I started thinking that mine is missing a cape and a club

So it did not take long to branch out in the gnome sculpting. We call this guy the little big foot. When I started, I thought I was just going to give him a long big beard and long hair, well, this happened. When I got to the top, the bald head made me laugh, so I left it. Enjoy!

This is 3rd in a series, trying to get smaller in my sculpting. The Gnome behind is the second one, so this new one is smaller. Some how the feet keep getting bigger. These gnomes I am creating without any preliminary sketches, I usually draw what I am sculpting in exact size. Maybe a sketch would help.........

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH What could it be!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know that the donkey came out this year, and I see christmas Knight and Eve are in the previews........ But we are still missing 2 wise men, drummer boy , camels, etc....

Added to the beard and the nose. Now has better flow from the hat to the belly

And then my son tells me that murry is not actually the ancestor to the elephant :(

Continuing with my ancient animals, and this family's love of elephants, I made a moeritherium (murry thear e um) or as we call him, Murry. This animal , the size of a large pig is also distantly related to the sea cow. There are 3 different artistic ideas what this animal looked like. They are 1) a long necked pig, 2) a Tapir or 3) something elephant like. All agree that there was probaly some flexible upper lip, and it had a few longer teeth that were not quite tusks yet. In my version, I was going for something in the tapir/elephant area. My 9 year old son, the elephant enthusiast, told me that it was a nice try. High praise from the expert