Week 3 of the 2018 Polymer Clay Challenge - Soon!

Just a quick update before I run out the door... again.

I have my week 3 head sculpted, I just need to take some pictures and he will be uploaded!! Just a regular guy this time, not a zombie.

I am almost done week 4 as well. I am home this weekend, sort of, so I will get some pictures loaded.

Week 2 zombie is painted, he'll be posted as well.

See you soon :0)

Sunny Southern California!

As you may (or may not) know, my man is currently working in sunny So Cal. While he may occasionally miss me, the weather there gives him something to brag about. I got to go see him this past weekend and had such a great time! He took me to some of the interesting places he has found.

Mexican food and margaritas - YUM!

Tide pool full of little crabs and a giant red starfish

The beach... also called dog beach

Bird of Paradise at San Fernando Mission

I had such a great time. So much so that I rarely took any pictures. He took me to Knotts Berry Farm - so much fun, the San Fernando Mission (amazing), a cool local brewery housed in a warehouse and so many more places that I can't believe I only took a dozen or so pictures and only 4 worth sharing. I wore my fitbit and did almost 20,000 steps each day that I was there. Yes, we were busy and it was awesome.

The beach was lovely, almost as lovely as the 85 degree sunny weather. The beach he likes to walk on is called dog beach locally because it is dog friendly. It was fun to walk along the beach and see dozens of dogs happily playing on the beach and in the water, no aggression, no fights, just hanging with their humans. It was wonderful.

The tide pool is on this beach, it is at the base of a large pile of boulders. Each boulder is as tall as I am and the lower ones are covered in mussels. It was pretty awesome to see and that starfish was easily as big as a large dinner plate!

I am ready to go back, especially since it is supposed to snow here by Friday morning.

I'll post more sculpting pics this weekend... right now I am still wishing I was in So Cal!

2018 Polymer Clay Challenge Week 2

I know I am a bit late posting this but I was in sunny Southern California with my hubby :0)

Here is my week 2 head. It is sculpted but not yet painted. I'll paint him this weekend along with my week 3 head.

The difference the paint makes is amazing with the zombies.

Exposed brain - Of course

Droopy mouth, scars, one exposed eye

I like him. His eyes look too cool to be gross. They are almost bronze looking, I have no idea how that happened. I will be experimenting with zombie eyes again soon. I am thinking more yellow, less red, and maybe a bit of lime green. I'll keep you posted. 

New Flickr Album link

I created a new Flickr album for the #2018PCChallenge. The 2017 album is no longer linked form the blog but is available on my Flickr site. It is located on the left of the site with this picture. You can also click the picture to get there:

I have 2 zombies in the new album, I consider both of them week 1 heads since I created them both on the same day. I'll have another zombie in there this week. 

2018 Polymer Clay Challenge

Yes, I am super busy, yes I am planning on finishing 30 college credits between now and September 30th, yes I know that my time is limited BUT I had to join. This will be my third year participating in the challenge and I plan on doing more than I did last year. Since I averaged about 1 head per month, give or take a few, I think I can do more.

I will once again be sculpting heads for the challenge. Last year, the challenge did exactly what I thought it would do, it helped me expand my skill. I am willing to try new things because I am always making a practice head. I am always making more. If I get super busy or have a contest/challenge/swap I work on what I need to and then get back to the challenge. I refuse to stress myself out over something that I love ;0)

Soooo, you will see more heads this year, maybe next year I turn them into dolls!

Zombie Eye Experiment Part 2 - Zombie Heads!

I had so much fun sculpting Zombies over the New Year holiday.

Here are a couple that have been painted. I am very pleased with how the eyes look. Still not as creepy as the pictures, but not bad. I may have to do some more experiments to see if I can get them more monsterish.

The second one really is gruesome! I noticed that I always droop the same side of the face. I'm going to try to mix it up a bit next time. We'll see how that goes.

Making these guys was fun. Next I'll need to do hands and feet for them and then make them into dolls. One of them may be used for the Art Doll Quarterly Haunted Fairy Tales challenge. Once I start fleshing them out a bit more I will know if either of them will work.

Stay tuned :0)

Zombie Eyes - Don't read if Zombies freak you out!

For the next Art Doll Quarterly challenge I am working on a zombie fairy tale doll. For this challenge I decided to experiment with the realistic eyes that I learned to make to see if I could make zombie'esque eyes.

Before I got started I did an internet search for Walking Dead Zombies (I'm a fan) and found some pretty gruesome zombies!

Here are the two that really caught my eye and totally grossed me out! So of course these are what I am using as an example.

I have a close up of the eyes in the top picture but they are truly horrible and I just couldn't make you look at them close-up. The artists who do the makeup for the zombie cast in the Walking Dead are truly amazing.

Anyway, I wanted to make eyes that are creepy and more monster than human so I went with yellow and red for the iris. Since the eyes I make are so small you really don't get the type of detail that you see in these pictures but I believe that they will give me the effect that I am looking for.

I choose a cad yellow and medium red to start with. I finely chopped both colors separately then added very small bits of the red  to the yellow and chopped it again, making it the bits even smaller.

Zombie Eye Experiment 1

Eyes Ready for Color and Clay

Ready for Clay and pupils

The above are ready for the iris clay. As you can see I also made some non-zombie eyes. I really enjoy making eyes this way.

I experimented with yellow, red and gold as a base color for the eyes. I think all three work. 

The eyes on the right also glow in the dark

Glow in the dark zombie eyes (Radioactive Zombies?)

I really like these!

So here they are. I think my favorite are the larger set but I am very pleased with all of them. I am ready for the Zombie Swap this year and I think I'll be able to get the look I am after with some of these eyes. Check back soon for a picture of a zombie with these new eyes. 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

I hope your 2018 is full of happiness, family,

 friends, love, laughter and art.