Garden Reverie- 2nd Post

Glad to share the next step for creating my garden lady — figuring out her hairstyle. Sculpting her hair is my favorite part of modeling her (adding clothing is a close second… sculpting the face comes in third although it’s the most difficult).

Most of the time I like to work in silence because I need to concentrate and think about what I’m seeing on the model, not just sculpt what I see.  Understanding the bones and muscles as I mentioned earlier helps me sculpt more lifelike.  But when I sculpt hair, there is no anatomy to think about, I get to be free and flow with it.  For this I turn on the cd player with my favorite music and let joy and love come up in my heart.  Then, with a clear mind, add one tendril at a time and enjoy the process.

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Water-based clay is so wonderful to work with when sculpting hair because it doesn’t push back on your tools like oil based clay does.  Applying water along with a wet brush, the hair can be “brushed” and hair lines will result.  Also, I like to use tools such as thick paper or pieces of plastic to pull through the hair to form it and leave brush strokes.  Fingertips work well along with moist clay for organic textures to result.  To soften, I apply a wet brush over all the hair as needed and then add back sharpness here and there.

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I’d like for her hair to be fuller in the front but next I’ll start working out her hair in the back. I think a long wavy loose braid would accent her torso from the back view.

Thanks for following the progress.

~Tamara

(See Garden Reverie’s finished clay pics and promotion ^[6] and bronze photos ^[7])