It’s been a “Fur Piece from Thar to Here” but except for one more “maybe” in the next day or so, here is the “Final Red-Tail Hawk”.
If you check back through the last last eight or ten Newsletters, you will see the progression of this sculpture from a 12 inch disc of 3/4 inch plywood (Donated by Tyler Mowery of Loudonville.), a pile of PVC pipe (Not donated by anyone), ten pounds of polymer clay, a couple of boxes of aluminum foil, and about 10 feet of 14 gauge wire, to the current sculpture.
I learned a few things along the way:
- Polymer clay needs to be heated to 275 degrees to set up.
- A sculpture that has dimensions of 16 inches long X 16 inches high X 12 inches wide won’t fit into an oven with a 14 inch X 24 inch door opening.
- However, if you use a heat gun (The kind that you use to strip paint), and cure the polymer in stages it will work fine.
- If you hold the piece that you are curing in your fingers, you’ll wish you hadn’t.
I also learned that:
- If you are going to use acrylics to paint your sculpture, you should put down a couple of coats of Gesso first.
- If you have fine detail on your piece, thin down the Gesso or it will fill up the detail.
- Use a Matte Glazing Medium mixed into your paint if you want to kill the shine on the piece. I started out with “Satin” and I still have more shine than I want.
- Don’t paint with Burnt Umber if you are wearing a good sweater of a lighter color.
All in all I really enjoyed the learning experience (This was my first sculpture using polymer clay) and I will be doing more sculptures in the future. This does not mean I will be giving up painting.
If you get a chance, stop in the Stonewall Gallery in Loudonville to get a view in the round.
That is a lovely sculpture! It looks wonderfully realistic. Those are some great tips, too. I will be sure especially not to do number four of the first four tips – it sounds painful!
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Hi Allison,
Thanks for your comment. My wife had a bit of an issue with Item #4 of the second set of four. She had bought the sweater as a Christmas gift for me. Looks like it will be coal in the stocking next year.
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Ha ha! That’s hilarious! XD XD XD At least you learned your lesson. 🙂
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