DSW statuette (2014)

As some may know, I once created a character named DSW. He's a half wolf/ werewolf, which means he's furry all the time.

Because most things I made of him are send to friends, I decided to make a little statuette for my own.

This statuette is made from air dried clay; no special, fancy, expensive clay as some thought, but just the cheap brand from the Action. (I'm not saying that's the best clay to use, but it worked)

DSW aka: Dark Shadow Wolf.
 Finished Statuette.

Normally, before sculpting anything I make a drawing of a nice pose. But DSW had a picture I've always used at the forum as my banner. So it made sense to use that pose as my base:

Old drawing made with Paint.

As you can already see I made some alterations to him: He lost his bandana and shirt and his scythe is turned the other way. I thought his torso was too detailed to put it to waste behind a shirt + I didn't really like the bandana for this statuette.

The scythe made more sense pointing the other way, as it is more ready to slash at your opponent.

Back to the process:
I made all his body parts separately.

Tip: Don't do that.

Later I learned that it is best to use a metal armature (Yes I started with this before the wedding sculpture I did some time ago).

The pros of not using it is that you have better access to put in more detail on the arms etc.

The cons, and it's a big con; it's very hard to put your sculpt together.
Not all glues will work on clay (I use wood glue) + a clay torso is relatively heavy, making it terrible to put it on his feet.

That aside:

Attempt to glue his body parts in place using all kinds of pins.

DSW's head.

Front side, finished.

Finished sculpting.

I kept his scythe separate from his body until the end, because it's easier to work with.

In the beginning I wanted to make a mold of it and make resin casts. I contacted with a mold making business for tips but the never replied back. I didn't want to ruin what I had so I decided to keep it with this single sculpt and paint it.

For a base I used a dark tone of brown. Make sure you get into all the crooks (which is quite a task when painting fur)

First layer of dark brown paint.

After that there aren't in between pictures.

His fur is finished with airbrushed light brown

For his pants I first painted it a dark tone of blue and finished it with a lighter tone of blue.
The scythe is painted black, then it received a metal color coating.
The skull is drowned into a grayish brown diluted paint soup and rubbed "clean". This leaves a nice "old" tone to it.

When I made the base I noticed it looked boring, so I created a little forest setting. Stones are made from torn pieces of dried clay, grass it made from painted rough paint brushes (pigs hair) and little twigs from rolled up clay.

The last coating is a varnish. I used the most mat type of varnish they had, because I don't want his fur and pants to be all shiny.

For his eyes, metal and teeth I did use a high glossy varnish.

As a finish I added his signature.

Finished piece

Left side.

Right side

Back side.

I know it might sound stupid, but even I'm amazed about how he turned out. I think he's pretty awesome.

Close up.

Flee Market Signs (2014)

Since a couple of years my aunt helps organizing a flee market that benefits the church.
They have some old road signs and my aunt thought it was a nice idea to get new ones and asked for my help to come up with ideas and make them.

We had some conversations about it and these 2 were our final ideas:

I knew it would take a lot of work to paint these on boards of about 1 meter, so I asked if she was able to help to color them. My aunt knew a lady who can do a good job at painting, so she took one of them to her.

First I drew them using pencil, than I traced my lines with a permanent marker. Later on, after the paintings were finished I redid the tracing and gave it a layer of varnish to protect it from the rain.

My drawing of some flee market things.

The finished sign, which the artist lady finished.

The other drawing.

My finished piece.
The colors aren't that clear due to the sun being on the wrong side of the sign.

Faux Bronze (2014)

One of the things I have learned at my Wood- Marble imitation classes is feax bronze. Which is a technique to turn an ordinary sculpture into a (fake) bronze one.

As a practice model I've used a cement statue of a lion holding a crest. (Which I use as a book stand.)

Finished sculpture

I started by applying a brown coating of acrylic paints. Acrylics are used because cement reacts on other types of paints.

Beginning stage:
I forgot to take a before picture in time.

Brown Sculpture.

After this coating, the sculpture is painted with a special Antique Bronze acrylic paint. This is a more gold tone of color than regular bronze, which is more orange/ copper colored.

When that has dried properly, the whole sculpture is coated with "stove polish". It's a black substance used to, as the word implies, polish stoves. Once this is rubbed on, rub it off again using a clean cloth. If you have a big sculpture, do this in steps; as you don't want to have it dried up and unable to rub it off anymore.

Now it looks already a bit older as the black residue remains in the deeper area's.

To finish it off we used some (gold) bronze powder to accent some highlights using a dry brushing technique.

Finished right side

Finished left side

 In the mean time I've already done some more statuettes, I'll put them here once I've got the pictures ready.