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:

1. Polymer clay needs to be heated to 275 degrees to set up.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. If you hold the piece that you are curing in your fingers, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

I also learned that:

1. If you are going to use acrylics to paint your sculpture, you should put down a couple of coats of Gesso first.
2. If you have fine detail on your piece, thin down the Gesso or it will fill up the detail.
3. 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.
4. 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.