Pregnant!

Well hello out there, Im sorry for the time lapse between the prelude blog and this one (a week!), but it will have been worth the wait, especially for those who are interested in the miniature sculpting process, as well as those who want to sculpt and learn how to sculpt their own miniature figurines.
My latest piece is a pregnant figure, she sits 3.5” so is about as large as I make them. She began with an idea to have a brown-skinned woman in a peaceful state meditating on her impending pregnancy. I also wanted to spend extra time and care on her hands as hands have always been my weak point in my opinion. Smaller figures I let slide because they are so minute, but the bigger the figure, the more important her hands become. I will be using the coil method from now on with my larger figures hands… and perhaps in some of the smaller ones.

The Process:
She begins as any other polymer clay as sheer potential, all polymer clays need to be kneaded or wedged or just worked in your hands to make it soft and pliable, after this is done, I make a head shape and begin sculpting, in this case, balls are put in for eyes, and a strip of clay for the nose, also a piece for the bottom lip, I usually make the top lip simply by cutting a line and pushing the clay outward instead of adding. She is not symmetrical yet, but clay is a forgiving medium and you can always alter it.



Press and shape until you get the symmetry you desire, I smushed those bug eyes in and moved the lines around to make them more even, this is an excellent way to make one of a kind dolls that are just like people, no person has a perfectly symmetrical face. I had made her lips too pouty before, and even though I’ve done many pieces this way, I wanted her to have a longer grin which is a bit more realistic




I was never especially good with ears and sometimes when the butterfly people have a lot of hair, I skip it altogether, but alas, sometimes you miss a spot and wish ears were there to save your fairy with a bald spot and obvious lack of ears. So what I do is just put a half-circle of clay, blend it in, and push in the hole where the ear opens, and slightly carve in the other lines, I don’t put much detail into my ears, just be sure the ears are in propotion with the face and begin at the eye brow and end at the corners of the mouth; you can see mine has oversized ears, but so do I :-p



Next, its time for hands, don’t be afraid of hands, they (like math) were once my enemy, but when you go full force to face them, they are not so scary, and also not so complicated. I still make the easy hands which is make a mitten, press in three lines, and your done, but these hands, though much more effort, are very intriguing.
First you need to measure her face, make the hand about from her chin to her eye brows, then make five fingers in the form of coils, look at your own hands to get the proportions right and to see which fingers are longer than the others. My hands are kind of big and im also a male, so my figures often have oversized hands, I like this and am obviously aware of it as hands are very expressive. Blend the clay of the fingers together to make what looks like hands, after you have done this, fatten up those hands by putting a piece of clay in the middle and smoothing it over those bones! Be sure to get that fat, meaty part of the hand where the thumb attaches. You can scrape in lines as I attempted to do, but in small polymer clay figures, it probably isn’t best as it makes the figures look old.




Here I have attached the hands to the figures torso I made, her arms look oversized, but I am actually going to make this butterfly person in proportion (or at least more so than most of my others), my other pieces are usually not in proportion, they have very short legs for various reasons including they have to fit in cases often, and also because they are butterfly people, not human beings.



Here shes earned her legs and toes have been sculpted, they are pretty easy, just press in the lines and if you want, also press in toe nails.
I have positioned the hands in the desired position here, I know its traditional (the norm) to have her holding her belly, but the work I put into the hands was not about to go unseen! HA! Plus shes meditating as I said before so she is allowing universal energy to flow through her palms, into the top of her head, and out through her root.




I finally put hair on her, its minimal compared to the headdresses I usually implore on my pieces, but again, instead of hair being the focus, I want people to see her hands. The hair also makes her race ambiguous so she can appeal to a wider range of people, she could be native, Indian, black, Hispanic, and various others.




I present:
My first pregnant Butterfly Person.

Prelude to a blog

Hi everybody, apparently my blog is going to be updated weekly, it seems I have time on Thursdays to make stuff and sometime after that but before Monday to post pictures and write about the creation process, my new blog will feature some neat things, for one, a piece that marks a threshold in my work, my first pregnant figure, and she also has the best hands I have ever sculpted which as always been a problem for me, goodbye hand molds, sculpting them is much more attractive (im talking about the large figures here). Im also going to dredge up some older concepts I had but abandoned like the flower people I used to make, I made a couple of those, and also the small figures with text on them, I like to make these becaue they sort of shove things in your face... instead of seeing something "cute" which you can check out my blog or etsy store and read about its meaning only to discover it represents encouragement, its a bit more research oriented than me just writing "encouragement" on it. The downside? That some people dont like what I write on them, especially when I get philosophiacal, but though cookies, I like to think about things like do we really have free will? Is life absurd/does it really have purpose? Are we spiritual beings or physical war-causing, money grubbing, materialistic beings who only want to accumulate more instead of making a difference? :) You never know what side ill be on unless you pay attention! Anyway, here is one little one I did today, she signifys nothing! Only a little figure in a flower, how simple is that?

Use of Molds

Lets talk molds.
Now, in the art community it seems molds are looked down upon, and yes, its true that molds can give an artists art the look of manufactured imports, but used sparingly and appropriately, molds are a crafters best friend. I don’t like to use molds on the faces of the butterfly people, and not even on the hands anymore like I used to because of the “look” that it injects making the work just look unoriginal. I do agree with using molds for things like beads and accessories though because they can be very cute, a lot cuter than the 100% handmade versions. So Im for molds, but not for my butterfly people themselves, but anyway, I did make a mold from a rabbit some time back and just re-discovered it today! I’m so happy about this that I made a little rabbit girl fairy.
Below are pictures showing how to use a mold like this one, where you have two halves instead of just one push mold, you have to make two separate clay rabbit halves and then fuse them together. After I did this, I painted the rabbit a bit with black paint to create pseudo shadows in the creases in its legs and mouth-nose area. The piece is made of polymer clay and also used/found jewelry. I will put it for sale on my purchase page, if you link directly to the blog, my website is thebutterflypeople.com.

(below) the mold I made for a rabbit


Two halves dont fit perfectly together, and must be fused




fused and smoothed out, also etched in a face


now the sides need "fixing"




legs seperate

done

Orecla is BORN!

Is it safe to sleep under the Brooklyn Bridge? It is if your name is Orecla. Orecla was just born, she was my celebration of the sale of one of my butterfly people I have had for a little bit… she was white, blond hair, with blue eyes, and she was a freedom fairy girl with crazy hair and cool stars in her case. This piece was a celebration, I wanted to make a new piece that spoke of the old one, so I thought lets make the one I sold again, but this time show her in her youth. I imagine she formed out of a lilly somewhere curled up in the fetal position (very much like a little egg!) before she awakened to the magical world of New York City! She sleeps under the Brooklyn bridge in one of the pics… or at lest she sleeps in my hand with the bridge in the background J
She is TINY, absolutely small, I put a picture with her and my other piece “Self Awareness” to show scale, also next to a quarter, but you can really just see how tiny she is next to my finger nails and in my hands how small she is, absolutely a treasure. I just whipped out the ruler, and she is exactly an inch and a quarter long and about a half inch off the ground when lying on her left side. I etched in little tiny toes and she holds onto her knees as she slumbers. Hope you like her, I sure do.

watch as she takes shape!
No molds were used with this piece, she is 100% hand-made




Legs!

Slumber girl needs some hair



Thats the actual piece of clay that was used to make her hair with.


Blurry, but that is the brooklyn bridge

Absolutely tiny


timeless

backside view




I swear I didnt make her, she rolled out of this flower :-p (kidding)



All this is based on the celebrated sale of this butterfly person:
Supposedly she turns into her when she grows up :-D

Welcome to INDIA (new piece)

The new piece I have here was made when I happened upon this wacky elephant which I decided I had to own, I thought it was interesting with its obviously sculptured shape and seemingly arbitrary placement of a mosaic of tiny mirrored pieces of glass or plastic, beads, sequins, and a chain.; its outrageous and I saw a vision of one of my figures sitting on it. So I began sculpting a little brown man and after placing him atop the elephant I knew something was missing, he needed a companion, and they both needed more pizzazz to match the elephant. I really like the couple, they have a sense of togetherness the way they are sharing the world together, wherever I place this piece, I feel like they are on a journey and how they look off into the same direction is really touching. I imagine that she just whispered something about a scene they just passed, or maybe they are just sitting looking out over the water at the sunset or in a jungle. I love it. The figures mesh so well because they are both so different, his stone personality and aged features contrast with her youthful face and mischievous nature. They are both well-dressed in polymer clay. You can see some rolled out pieces of colors in the photos below of clay, some of which I used on them. He was made purposely thin to indicate they are in some other country and a natural people. They look like they may be from India or the vicinity. He has baggy light blue shorts on with a belt made of multi-colored clays. She wears a pink dress adorned with beautiful clear crystal stones embedded in it. She has a multi-colored top on, and a scarf of blue and red links the two, blue for tranquility and red for love. The elephant also mirrors these colors, he has some pink and a blast of red on the mouth part. I placed a chain to further link the couple together and also relate them to the elephant who is super encrusted as if a mosaic. The girl has heavy eye copal on since I wanted her to look eastern, and the man is bald… I later etched lines in his forehead to make him appear older. I also added a polymer clay flower handmade by me to her hair for a touch of femininity since she’ straddling the elephant like a real trooper.
This entire piece is just under 3.5 inches tall, the figures will amaze you at their trinket size… they would look great in some kind of glass display.


























































I know I usually narrow the pictures down to just a few best, but I had to show every angle of these two precious stones.

New Piece - "Race: Juxtaposition and Reposition"

The piece I was talking about on the lower half of yesterdays blog has been COMPLETED! I love it, its purpose, to make you think about preconceived notions of race which I myself have even been a victim of accepting. Obviously this could be turned into a series of pieces called “Race: Juxtaposition and Reposition” It could be a series because there are so many other things to reposition which are stereotypes, this one basically deals with hair and eye color, another could be to reposition the features such as large lips and wide nose opposed to slender nose and thin lips and even body type, but this is what I have now, it gave the black woman blue eyes and blond, straight hair, and it gave the white woman dark eyes and textured locks of dark hair. They are not facing each other, they are sitting next to each other, both in a polymer clay-formed toga or primitive dress, their hands are joined together to ensure this piece is not taken negatively, it is not a battle of the races, it is a co-existing and blurring of racial lines in a way.

Giving for a good cause (and thoughts on the next creation)

(This blog will not have any photos)

Last year I donated a butterfly person to a geriatric foundation in Florida which was doing a silent auction to benefit geriatrics and I reasoned that if we live long enough we would all be geriatrics so I thought it was a good cause.
Well, today I was contacted by a volunteer community fundraiser called Relay For Life which will hold a silent auction on June 20th in Woodbury, MN; and all proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society. They are seeking unique, distinctive items and I am going to actually make them a special butterfly person, she may read: “Relay For Life” but that may be unnecessary, I will think about it. Either way she will be beautiful and probably faceless since cancer doesn’t discriminate.

Im thinking about a new piece, it is going to involve racial stereotypes and juxtapose two female figures, facing each other as if looking into the mirror. Im not sure how to make this piece without contradicting myself because there are going to be a brown figure and a white/lighter figure, it will represent African Americans and whites, however the white figure will have the bushy afro-style hair while the black person will have straight, light-colored hair. The thing is speaking about race and also wanting what the other race has such as hair and features, but I don’t think I want to switch the features because then the white one would just look albino and the brown one would look like a person from India. Should I even attempt it? I’m thinking keep the traditional “African” features on the brown figure even though this is continuing with following stereotypes which I wanted to address, but the hair will be switched and perhaps eye color… I want to do this because (in New York at least) you see many white girls with dreadlocks now and African-American girls with straightened and colored hair. I’m not against any of it, I just want to speak about it, how the different races want what they were not born with, with what the other one has. This could be done as early as tomorrow sometime if I get offline and start working on it.