My Crafty Things: 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.