Chapter 7 - GRIFFINS: Orelav

In this chapter you will learn how to make a cross between a roaring lion and eagling eagle. This is what they call a griffin, a magical creature that is very popular on coats of arms of all sorts.

Chapter 6 - GORGONS AND VAMPIRES: Medusa and Branduff

In this chapter we kill two birds with one stone; we show how to make two different characters using the same beginning. The Gorgon, the mythical female monster who had snakes for a hair, turns out to have a lot in common with the Vampire Branduff.

Non polymer clay fun

It has been quite a while since we last posted, but we were busy with some non polymer clay fun. Dinko and I (Boris) had to put some time in organizing the third annual Midsummernight's sprinkle - essentially a water gun fight which happens traditionally in front of the national theater in Sofia. It has been a cool event - again. About 120 people showed up and had a great time for about five minutes. With this over we are steadily returning to polymer clay and hopefully will post often on the blog. Oh, almost forgot - here are some pictures from the water fight.

Chapter 5 - MERMAIDS: Jambalini

In this chapter we show how to make half-fish, half - hold your breath - female character. A.k.a. Siren, Sea Maid etc. The reason why you had to hold your breath is that if you are already familiar with the type of character that Boris and I typically make, you will have probably noticed already that we tend to make clumsy trolls and goblins rather than delicate and effeminate forest and sea beings. And so we do not make female characters very often.

We show how to make the upper body of a girl and the tails of a fish, in such a way that the tail and fin look like the dress and feet of the character. In the variations we take this concept one step further and make a mermaid with a more sophisticated dress. We really wanted to make a Merman too, bit skipped that part for some reason. You can make your own mer-dudes by using the torso portion of the Centaur (half-man, half horse creature) lesson, in one of the following chapters and the fish part from the mermaid character. You can make all kinds of mer-things for that matter. I personally wanted to make a Mer-Miaou character at some point, but you've gotta draw a line somewhere eventually... Don't let me stop you though.

Another thing you can do, and I think I have seen a drawing like that somewhere, is to make a sort of inverted mermaid - the head of a fish, with the sulk and the bulging eyes, and the legs of a human. A visual pun of sorts. Applied to the centaur project, and I will sure mention it again when i get to it, this line of thought gives a human body and the head of a horse - which, if you think about it is one step away from making a Minotaur - the famous mythical monster in the Labyrinth, with the human body and the bull's head. To make a bull's head make the ears, lips and nostrils of the horse's head (that you will learn how to make in the Unicorn project).

Dinko's fan

I (Boris) was really happy yesterday to see what Dinko's fans do. Susan Sherry Avarello set up a Flickr group for polymer clay creations inspired by Dinko's work. I have to say also that I personally really like Susan's work. Her creations can be found at her Etsy store and on Artfire. You must check out her work. I have to say too that the other thing I enjoy is the nickname she uses sometimes 'time4coffee'. For me personally it is always time for coffee. I drink almost 1/4 of a gallon of that stuff each day. Anyone who enjoys coffee and Dinko's work is in my 'coolest people' list.

A very happy day!

Yesterday Dinko got married!!! It was a beautiful ceremony, a lovely day outside and a wonderful reception. Lots of fun and dancing, lots of relatives that you usually don't see often but who are nice and make a great party when together. Both Sophia and Dinko looked amazing. Being a guest invited to a wedding is one of my favorite things!!!
The picture is not that good but once the official pictures are out and ready I will change it.

Chapter 3 - HALFLINGS: Mr. Gladden

In this chapter we show how to make a hobbit character, although we never use the word "hobbit" itself in the book, because it was the name of a race of creatures in the Lord of the Rings invented by Tolkien, so we didn't want to infringe copyright. We used "halfling" in the end, instead of hobbit, because our legal department is too busy just now. :) Anyway, hobbit or not, it was made to look like one, as you will recognize.

Again we build on the previous projects - a slighly more sophisticated face (and I don't mean that in the sense of "refined"), standing on two legs (two armature bits) etc. Based on the same design any human character can be built, if you vary the proportions a little.

Taurus

Believe it or not this is a Taurus. It is built for a friend of mine who will give it as a gift. Here are the specifications he gave me (Boris).
- it has to smile - check
- not very big horns - check
- dancing position - check
- sunglasses between the horns - check
- a bottle of vodka that has to be removable in case the person he intends the Taurus for gets offended - check
- a silver necklace - check, even though this is not exactly silver, but it looks like it, some old piece of broken jewelry
- silver trainers with pink stripes - check
- I love WV Polo inscription - check
So much for building custom ordered figurines. Hope you like it.

Chapter 2 -PIXIES: Brice the Pixie

In the second chapter of the book we show how to make a pixie. This project is tailored to beginners as well, and is intended to upgrade a notch the skills practices with the gnome. We show one way of making a slightly more sophisticated face and introduce the basic building block of wire armature to make some upstanding creatures. If you are into mythical creatures, you have probably seen over a dozen different images of what artist thought pixies should look like. That's just the thing - it has been so long since anybody last saw one that few people remember what they look like exactly. The general consensus seems to be that they are blue in color, so based on that we show how to make a pixie looking the way we think ought to look. We called it Brice.

Our friend Alexander

This is our friend Alexander playing with his son in the park. On the next picture is the gnome Alexander made. I (Boris) like a lot Alexander's attitide towards polymer clay. He uses it for purely recreational purposes, without building a stock of tools or clay. As you can see he did not adhere to the color scheme of the gnome. 'Those are the colors I had at hand' he says. He changed the hat a bit - instead of it being pointy, he made it curved at the top. The beard of his gnome has several colors, instead of the one color beard shown in the book. The head of the creature is smaller in comparison to the body than the ratio in the book project. Alexander doesn't care much about smoothing surfaces or making things look perfect, he uses the polymer clay sculpture to relax. In that respect I think he shares one of the main ideas Dinko and I had writing the book - polymer clay is for fun.

'Polymer clay fans are growing in numbers'

'Polymer clay fans are growing in numbers' - this is what the sales lady told me yesterday when I (Boris) went to buy some clay from my favorite polymer clay suppliers Dekar M.

She told me about these nice ladies that make jewels and jewelry boxes. She tried to find their catalog and since she couldn't, she told me she'll have it the next time I pass by. So I left. She then found the catalog and ran after me togive it to me. The paper catalog actually is much better and with more products featured than on their site. Plus - the site is in bulgarian only, but anyway here it is http://www.sugar-and-candy.com and the work has a really fresh vibe that I quite like.
And even though it may be nothing special, it is a fellow clayer and what is more a countryman/woman/women in this case and I am quite happy about it.

Project 1 - GNOMES: Rollieball Dropletson

Starting today we will do an extensive sneak-peek/ preview of all the project characters in our latest book Sculpting Mythical Creatures out of Polymer Clay. We start small, by showing how to make a gnome character – Rollieball Dropletson. Boris designed this character as an introductory project that requires very little prior skill or experience with clay, and next to no tools. You really need to know only two things – how to roll a ball, and how to make a rain-drop shape (also derivative of the simple ball). The idea is to make it comfortable for beginners to practise how to combine simple shapes to produce complex-looking results. At the end of the project we show several variation ideas and tips on how to make different gnome characters by varying facial hair.

Making of the dragon - part 2

This is the boring story how the dragon in the book became what he is. Once it was decided there has to be a dragon in the book, I (Boris) decided that I want to make it. So I did some research about dragons. Learned that there are many varieties of them and finally concluded that I will revert to the commonly known stereotype - fire breathing, scaled, big, winged. The red dragon is the first one I made. Although he is a magnificent beast there are several things about him that made him not suitable to be featured in a book project: he looks evil, he is too big - about 14 inch long and about 5 inch tall, and fat, too fat in fact. A project like that would consume time, lots of time. I work fast but he took me 2 days and several bakings to make. Another shortcoming is that you'd have to work with red only, which on a too big of a project is rather boring. So he has been measured, weighted and found unworthy to be the main character of the chapter. Next I proceeded to make the colorful dragon - did not change the size, left the wings out and tried to make him look friendly. Colorful scales took even more time and without the wings he looked a bit strange. At this point I knew: the dragon has to be all one color, he has to have wings and a friendlier expression, he has to be smaller.

The matter of size had to be tested too, so I made another dragon. It may not be obvious from the picture but she is much smaller. I say she because this dragon has the looks of a female dragon. And this is how the question of gender is resolved with polymer clay dragons - if the dragon looks male, male it is. If it looks female, female she is. It is a purely subjective decision you take. It is also a decision that is always correct no matter what you decide.

Making of the dragon - part 1

These are pictures of my dragon making Dinko took. The book will explain what happens in between the first picture and the last one. he first picture is of me (Boris) discussing with someone, don't remember who now, something, don't remember what now, something obviously important enough to stop working on the dragon. The second picture is again of me, it could have been a picture of any bald dude, but it is of me, preparing to take a brake. As you can probably see I prefer to work sitting on the floor. The comment I have to make here is about workspaces. Any workspace you feel comfortable with is fine, there is no rule that you should have a studio or a specific work area or anything like that.

This is the picture of the dragon that is in the book. Mention has to be made of the dragon variations. In order to be able to present a step by step instructions for his dragon I made several different dragons before this one. Sometimes making several versions of a figurine before making the final version works better. However there are times when the final version of the figurine is the first one you make and only after that ideas of variations rush into your mind. Both approaches work equally fine. In my opinion when you feel inspired (and inspiration is a mysterious thing) the second approach comes into place. At times of logic and cold blooded craftsmanship the first approach seems to work better.

The 'old bone' look.

I(Boris) had to explain again to a fellow clay enthusiast how I give the figurines I make an old bone look. So here is what I would normally do description. The first two pictures are of the same not varnished and then varnished figurine. Keep in mind that the same effect can be used not on one color sculptures only. It can be used on colorful sculptures too. You just have to keep in mind that the varnish will make the colors darker and in some cases slightly change them.

There are two different ways to achieve an old bone look for figurines made of white clay only. One way involves working with brushes gouache and water - this way is suitable for kids. Better results are achieved working with turpentine, asphalt varnish, brushes and old rags - this way is not suitable for children. So here is some info about materials. I feel it is important to read before continuing.

Gouache Extra Fine Quality flacon 16 ml

Turpentine (also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, wood turpentine, gum turpentine) is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, mainly pine trees. It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene. It has a potent odor similar to that of nail polish remover. It is sometimes known colloquially as turps, but this more often refers to turpentine substitute (or mineral turpentine).

The word turpentine is formed (via French and Latin) from the Greek word terebinthine, the name of a species of tree, the terebinth tree, from whose sap the spirit was originally distilled

Asphalt varnish. Asphalt varnish is composed of asphalt pitch that is heat-treated with Gilsonite and thinned with mineral spirits or naphtha. Varying degrees of flexibility and toughness are obtained by varying the ratio of pitch to Gilsonite.

Giving an 'old bone' look - for kids

These are the tools needed to give the creature the 'old bone' look. Two bottles of gouache, one ochre and one black. A small plate to mix the gouache. If you don't have gouache but have tempera paint at home it will also work fine. It is good to have several brushes of different sizes. Those don't have to be expensive - ordinary brushes that kids use at school are perfectly fine as long as the hair of the brush doesn't fall.

The process is as follows - imagine (at this point imagine) you have the pawn or the pawns baked. Take some ochre and some black and mix a dark ochre color. I missed to ad that you will need some water to work with the qouache, but I suppose you already worked that out. After you have the color ready paint a thick coat of gouache over the entire figurine. Be careful to paint all over the pawn, don't miss even the smallest and hardest to reach places. Let the paint dry for several hours. Then with a brush dipped in water start to wash off the paint. Most of the paint will wash off but some of it will change the color and some of it will remain at places. This will make the outlines of armor and other body parts better visible. After you have finished let the pawn dry. At this point it must be varnished one more time with a water based transparent varnish.

Giving an 'old bone' look - for adults
These are the tools needed to give the critter the 'old bone' look. A small bottle of turpentine - this one looks green because the manufacturer's label on the other side is green. Some asphalt varnish - here it comes in quite big bottles so one bottle can be shared between artists, that's what I did so my asphalt varnish resides in an old coffee box. You will need a wooden stick (sculpting tool in my case) or a spoonlike tool - you must have one since the asphalt varnish is quite thick and when small quantities have to be moved from one container to another such a tool is needed. A small dish to mix the turpentine. Several brushes. At this point is is good to remind that after finishing work with the asphalt varnish one must not forget to carefully wash the brushes.

The general idea is to paint the piece with the varnish, let it dry for about 20 minutes and then with a brush dipped in turpentine wash off the asphalt to the necessary point. I realize this is not explained in detail, but it is best to show the process and not describe it. I will be showing that process as soon as possible - as soon as I find someone to assist me and film it since it is a messy process and it is not possible to film and work at the same time. Another reminder when speaking of asphalt varnish and working with it is to remind those of you that have sensitive skin to work with gloves. And a reminder for everyone is to work with open windows or if possible outside your home - asphalt varnish and turpentine don't smell good.