My First Glazed Piece! I'm Really Pleased With The Way It Turned Out. No Idea What I'm Going To Use It

My first glazed piece! I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. No idea what I'm going to use it for, but at least I finally have something to show for myself. Today was my last class before the big trip, so I glazed everything else I've made up to this point so I can collect them all when I get home. Hooray!

Laguna, 2 hour class

Today was an exercise in good intentions gone awry. I tried to get this one done early in time to catch the light, and in the process of transporting everything across the street I dropped my camera, my tools, the figure itself, and my palette (the latter of which shattered), and after all that I didn't even get the shot I wanted. Oh well.

I was going for "mermaid being blown out of her aquarium/bowl by a strong wind." What, you're saying that doesn't translate?

Super Sculpey, ~60 min.

My first official request! This one is for my biggest fan, also known as Mom. She's an Egyptologist and she asked for "something Egyptian," so I made her a little statue of her favorite god, Anubis. I wanted to use the Sculpey III for color, but the clay is so much drier and tougher than Super Sculpey, so I wasn't able to be as detailed as I would have liked. The constant crumbling meant I couldn't touch a section once I finished it, and his ankh may or may not have looked like a crucifix at several points. Nevertheless, I have prevailed! Hope you like him, Mom.

(Here's the form if you want something, too.)

Sculpey III, ~2 hours

In my grand, library-stalking adventure last weekend, I picked up a half a dozen books on sculpting. Some of them were weighty tomes by old masters on modeling the figure in clay, but one of them was Sculpting Mythical Creatures out of Polymer Clay by Dinko and Boris Tilov. Just look at that cover! I started here because this book is the shortest, honestly. And how can you pass up a book with the subtitle "Make a Gnome, Pixie, Halfling, Fairy, Mermaid, Gorgon, Vampire, Griffin, Sphinx, Unicorn, Centaur, Leviathan, and Dragon!" I mean, if you can read that out loud without laughing, you win. That's hilarious.

So then I made this gnome!

Super Sculpey, ~35 min.

I'm back!!

I had to redeem myself after that atrocious head I made a few days ago, so I went with something I knew I could make and I think it turned out pretty nice. It doesn't hurt that my medium of choice is already the right color and consistency for an octopus, or that he's basically just eight snakes on top of an egg. Whatever! At least I'm not mortified by the most recent entry in my blog anymore. That counts for something.

You may have noticed that the posts aren't coming once a day anymore. Now that I'm back from summer vacation and working full-time at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, I can't promise a figure a day anymore. I'll post a minimum of one a week, but hopefully more often than that. Thanks for sticking with me!

Super Sculpey, ~90 min.

I was all stoked to pick up my first glazed piece only to find out my instructor is a lazy bum and didn't fire anything. Rats! But to make it up to us, he let us try the wheel today. This bowl/vase thing is the first thing I made. Not too bad for a first try, right? Well, I guess technically my first experience was the Pocahontas Pottery Wheel my parents got me as a kid (which I begged for, then discarded), but I'm willing to overlook that if you are.

This one is going to be a mug, I'm told:

Laguna, 2 hour class