Here’s my second red haired sculpture called “Memories” but this sculpt has dark red hair rather than light as “With Love” had. I’d like to achieve the same rich red tone for next time but with less shine. If I were to add more china paint it would bring about a more satin gloss finish. With the base she’s …… 10 1/2″ tall by about 10 1/2 wide. Made several test tiles trying to get the right red color.  Red hair isn’t maroon, also it’s not found in all my many red glazes that I’ve bought, it’s really an orangish brown red created with a few glazes combined along with china paint.  I’m sure there are other shades of this hair color that I could try but this is what I came up with so far.

Because her hair is so dark I felt that her skin needed to be darker than “With Love” has.  Now she looks like she has a bit of a tan.

Dark Red Head Sculpture

When I started out with her, I didn’t think of an emotion to portray.  The facial emotion just came about while I was aiming for a pretty face.  :-)  Once I see a direction of emotion happening, then I go with it.

So many memories.... she's thinking of.

Her shawl and ruffle on her dress has lots of shimmery gold on it while the dress has aqua blue and royal blue highlights. Her eyes are green.

Closeup of the "Memories" sculpture's face.

Back view of the sculpture.

Well, now that I’m finished with my sculpts for my upcoming June show, I’m back to work on finishing a wax so that a new mold can be made of the small Beautiful Dreamer. After that I’ll get back to a few serious sculpts that will go into bronze.

Thanks for reading and your comments!

~Tamara

My Red Headed Lady Sculptures

What a treat to get to venture into new territory by doing two sculptures, both with red hair! I thoroughly enjoyed displaying the beauty of this special hair color. Normally I tend to use dark brown to black hair color or sometimes blonde but never have I depicted a red head! I didn’t even know if I could do it justice but wanted to try. Below you’ll see pics of….. the first of two red head women sculptures.

My husband says he’d call this “strawberry blonde,” but to me she has a light, in some places creamy, red hair. I love this color when I see it on girls. Just the right shade and it really makes me happy because the color is so bright and cheery in yet soft at the same time. She’s entitled, “With Love,” and her dimensions are 17″ tall by 4 1/2″ wide.

Red headed woman sculpture with "Love" inscribed on base.

This is one of the “quick sculpts” that I made for my local show coming up here in my home town. Since I have other sculpts not completed and destined to go into bronze but not ready as yet,  I wanted to have a few new things for the show.

First I made the pillar and had really no idea what I was going to do with it. Maybe I’d put a flower on top like I’ve done before with my “Hope Rose.” Ah, no, I decided to try a quick bust. Sort of looked funny at first because I gave her no arms, just a torso. But that didn’t have the right effect at all so arms and hands came along and then a dress trailing over the edge. Had to use up some of that vacant canvas (the rectangular pillar was empty).

Dress is trailing down the back of the rectangular pillar.

Have her hair trailing in the same directional flow as the dress. Was a lot of fun to add flowers and leaves to this pillar base. Now if I was a calligrapher (or could remember what I learned in high school art class about it), I would have surely benefited with even better lettering. But the writing of “Love” looks natural I suppose, ha, ha. In pottery class we used to have a joke that anything that wasn’t perfect was “handmade” and that somehow made it more valuable. A tricky way to get people to appreciate all the cracks and imperfections!

She has the slightest bit of a pooch in her stomach so maybe she’s pregnant “With Love.”

Holding her rose given "With Love."

Didn’t want her to look like a separate mass on top of a pillar so had to pick colors that would flow down the whole length of the piece. An even creamy taupe color is the base color for both the woman and the base. “Love” to me is a soft and sensitive emotion so tried to use the softest touch on her coloring- light eyes and hair and the dress color has shimmering mother of pearl over glaze.

Having two flowers, both different types, in the sculpt was kind of new for me too. An iris type flower (is that right you flower experts?) in her hair and then a rose in her hand. Decided on a bright shade of lemon yellow. Happy and cheery to go with her hair color. The rose is white with variegated salmon pink edges.

My mom, being a realist, thought that she was standing over a bridge. Well, that could be it, maybe she’s going to throw her rose into the water. We did that for my uncle’s funeral and might do that for my Grandma’s as well. But that’s sobering and this is supposed to be uplifting so I like to think of her receiving her rose flower “With Love” from her romantic guy.

Closeup to see her soft green eyes.

Lacy bodice has gold shimmers.

Stay tuned for update pics of “Memories” sculpture with red hair! Her hair is different than this sculpture. It’s a very rich red color.

Thanks for watching and comments are always welcomed.

~Tamara

Have you ever made a gift for someone and then lost track of them and couldn’t give it to them? That’s what happened to me several years ago. I had an online acquaintance that had given so much to me in the way of teaching me photography that I wanted to give that person a gift. The photographer had 2 cute little chihuahuas that were named “Peso Bill” and “Taca Belle.” I was inspired to ……. make a sculpture of the doggies in a taco bell sign as if they had just gotten married. This relief stands about 11 inches tall and has a little base extending out the back to support it.

Taca Belle has her veil on with peachy orange accents and purple roses in the center and feels really pretty for her wedding day. Mr. Peso Bill is decked out with a wild fluorescent orange glaze with specks of red and green etc. His tie is likewise in a wild red glaze and tux has metallic black to be dazzling.  Someone has brought them wine and gifts with dalmation ribbons and bones (no not dalmation bones as in cannibalism- come on!- just an average bone maybe from let’s say a cow or something)  for appetizer treats on their trip down the road. Gold bolder and hearts.

DoggyBell Matrimony

Was a fun sculpt to make on short order (real quick and not refined). Don’t know what I’m going to do with the sculpt because the taco bell symbol is under copyright. Maybe I’ll email a Taco Bell representative and see if they want to give me a year pass to get all the free Nachos Bell Grandes (jk) I want in exchange for this magnificent sculpture (tongue in cheek), ha ha!

Closeup of chihuahua's wedding day.

Since I’m having a show coming up I finished up some older projects. If you’ve followed my blog you’ll remember seeing this sculpt except without an arm. I gave it my best effort to change the composition on this and have her arm holding some grapes inward towards her body. I’m not completely satisfied but overall learned a lot on this.

My Joy color relief

Relief sculpture has brown eyes this time.

I have brown eyes but my sister has the most beautiful shade of sky blue and bright eyes. My mother has green eyes and my father has blue eyes. How did I end up with brown I ask? Well, anyway, most of my sculpts have either blue or green eyes but I decided this lady would have golden brown for a change.

Glass has sparkle on gold rimmed clay wine glass

Adding a sparkle effect to the glass was something new for me. Wanted it to look as natural as possible. There was already a reflection there but I just extended the reflection into an all out spark- lee!

Bronze version of ceramic relief.

I will definitely use this bronze effect on another sculpt.  She really does look a lot like a bronze and I have an idea to even give more of a bronze look next time. So I think it looks kind of cool and confuses my mind to see bronze and ceramic glaze all on one piece.

Skin loves the light just like in a metal bronze sculpture.

Rich colors in her dress of deep burgundy accent well the bronze.

Applying red glazes on her dress with a dark underglaze ended up this rich burgundy color.  All the colors on this piece are accented and brought out to the prettiest with china paint often with gold in them.

Luscious Pink rose with speckles and gold tipped leaves.

This pink rose is my husband’s and mother’s favorite. It’s actually more refreshing and light looking in person.

Luscious Pink rose close up

Purple Swirl rose with gold tipped leaves.

Love purple so this purple swirl rose appeals to lovers of purple.

Purple Swirl rose closeup

Well, those are a few sculpts all finished for my show and just wanted to share them with you and give some commentary and background on them.

Happy creative day to you!

~Tamara

Hey, I shocked my own self! I did it, yippee. Well, it’s not much but I truly showed myself that I could do a one dayer (beside the first session of basic structure that has to stiffen in order to work). This is going to be for an affordable sculpture for a local gallery show….. Having flowers for sale and other low dollar items makes it fun for everyone, so that people can take away something from the show if they want.

Getting a face on her and some semblance of a figure with feet, hands (well one hand is hidden) and all, takes some time but I whipped it up as best I could in one day.  It was actually fun to smear on the clay on to her dress and then make the ruffly ruffle (redundant I know) at the bottom of her skirt.

The part in between her calves actually has a line there now but I took the pics before I realized that I do want the anatomy to show an indention between the two legs.  Anyway, here’s some pics and later I’ll fire her and finish her out.  Got a nice oval black granite base that fits her perfectly.

She’s currently 10 1/2″ tall by 11″ wide.

Thanks for watching,

~Tamara

Rough clay sketch of lady showing contemplation.

Side view of lady.

Back view of lady clay sketch.

Very loose finish to the skirt.

Copyright Image Violations- How to Check

Hi all,

You can drag and drop your art images into Google “Images” Chrome search box and it will say, “Drop Images Here,” as you do so.  Then it will say, “Uploading File,”…… and search for your image across the web.  You can then see who may have copied and posted your pic without giving credit back to you.

I found a sculpture forum site (I think it’s Egyptian) called ward4u or something like that, and they had posted several of my images on one of their threads.  When I clicked to translate the page, I didn’t see my name mentioned at all.  I’ll have to join the site, though, in order to send a message asking if my name is mentioned and if not to either remove or to add my name credits for the art.

Hope this is of help to you all in monitoring your art on the web.

~Tamara

Discovery About Myself

Discovered that I really do love doing quick clay sketches. That initial creation period is intense and euphoric.  Since my reading book lady sculpt is destined to be refined in bronze, she will be my next project to finish for my romantic realism gallery.  Then I’m finishing my Indian in a Canoe sculpt!  Looking forward to it!

Meanwhile, I have this show coming up in my home town in June and I won’t have any new art that is finished which is embarrassing and disappointing.  So I made up some quickie rose sculpts and will glaze them……

Largest clay rose of the four- 6 inches.

The larger the rose, the more difficult because the rose has to be held in the hand and harder to do the bigger. This one seemed like it was 7 inches but now it’s shrunk maybe down to 6 inches and will shrink more during firing. All these pics show clay before firing.

Best to use fresh clay so that the clay will push easily into the hand in order to form the petals.  To make a clay rose, you roll up a ball of clay in your hand and then press with your thumb the clay into the palm. Form a long pressed flat rectangle at first and roll this into a twirl (swirl?) for the middle of the rose. Then put another ball of clay in palm and this time press into a small petal shape.  You can position the petal into the edge of the twirl, as if the petal is coming out of it. Keep working your way out to the edge of the flower, adding and staggering one petal after another.

There’s much more to making the rose but for now that’s a beginning. I like to add the sepals at the base of the flower and use my finger nail to make jag marks into them for realistic effect. By making the rose stem thick, this will give strength. Nothing worse than a broken clay rose after receiving it as a gift.

Veins showed up from my hands in the clay.

If the clay is fresh then your hand print will show up in the petals and seem like the veins of the flower for neat effect. I wrote “I love you” on the stems of these first two roses, that way they can be given as a rose to a loved one with a message on them.

Simple rose with small stem.

Smallest rose- 4 inches.

On the subject of discovery, I now know that I can’t do a quick one day sketch figurative (meaning a person) sculpt. I say each time that I’ll just do a quickie one day and I get carried away. Here’s two pics that show after one session. I detest the early pics but know people like seeing them. She looks awful! But it’s still pure joy as I’m sculpting it because it’s so fun to do new things.

So much to do but after one session of sculpting, is to be expected.

Very rough beginnings of clay sketch.

Last pic was after a few more sessions of sculpting her and will finish out the hand (and few anatomy adjustments), hair and probably leave her nude. I’ll  leave her a rough sketch style and later make another one off of this sculpt (when I have time) and refine that one further to go into bronze.

Ready for face and hair etc.

I’m glad to have a few things for the local show. Thanks for listening and seeing what’s going on with my work.

~Tamara

Best Waxing Pen

This is a technical post for fellow artists (and anyone else interested) that wants to peak at…. ….. my new Kerr Ultra Waxer 2 pen!

Oh how I’m in love with my new waxing pen. Well, I shouldn’t say new as if to imply I had an old one before. What did I have before? NOTHING but….. dental tools that I heated up very clunkily on a soldering iron or a flame from an alcohol torch; Both of which ended up burning the wax, producing toxic fumes that got to my lungs and I felt toxified!

Since I have detail sculpts, I needed a waxing pen that I could drip small amounts of wax and one that I could purchase different tips for detail works. The Ultra Waxer 2 has 10 different tips that you can buy. In these pics you’ll see 3 tips and then I have 3 more coming.

Need new mold for small Dreamer!

I’ve been telling you about how I need a new mold for the small Beautiful Dreamer. Does the above pic show the reason? LOL! A good portion of the feet and ruffles ripped out of the mold! You can see some of the blue silicone mold ripped off and stuck in the wax.

I have to cut off the feet and have a separate mold made for the feet (which should have been done separately in the first place). Lots of work to do in repairing this wax in order to have a brand new mold made by the foundry. They are going to do it for material cost only since they made a mold that didn’t last.

"Small PKT"-with the blue cushion grip.

The small tip works well for dripping smaller drops of wax. You dip the heated tip into a clump of wax and then drip that wax onto your wax cast as needed.

Kerr Ultra Waxer- "Large Pkt" with teal cushion.

See the temperature readings on the Kerr Ultra Waxer 2? You set the temp for spatula 1 and then spatula 2. It has a feature to quick heat in like 15 seconds or so. I like to set one to 130 degrees for smoothing out the wax with the side of the tool and the next to 230 degrees for getting a droplet of wax on the tool and place it on the sculpture.

Holder for the pen keeps the tip protected by a guard.

The spatulas fit very easily in these little guard pockets on the side of the machine.

Black cushion- Half hollenback tip; Red cushion- Needle

EDIT:- Just got the black and the red cushioned tips in the mail today (have one more coming). I just love both of them. The hollenback is slightly more pointed than the needle which is good for detail. The long needle is what I used a whole bunch yesterday and love it!

Gojo smooth hand cleaner works great for smoothing wax!

Being toxified by the the burning wax (when I was using my old system) and then using lamp oil (which is a solvent and bad to breathe), by the end of the day, I was feeling close to dead (ha, ha). So now, a friend suggested using Gojo hand cleaner to smooth wax rather than lamp oil and all is well! It works very well and doesn’t bother my lungs.

Well, that’s it for now. I need to get to work right now with this new Kerr machine and work on the wax.

Thanks for listening and hope your day is working in creative ways as well.

~Tamara

Wouldn’t you know it? My quickie sculpt is now going to be transformed into a serious sculpt and detailed out.

Here are a few pics just to show how….. ……. she looked after smoothing the roughness, the first two pics show how far I got after 4 sessions total, from the bag of clay to sculpted form.

Ruffly top part of her dress was easy to do and fun.

I sure did enjoy the fun of putting on that ruffly blouse, but now I will be taking it all off.  I already have refined the anatomy in the chest area more than what the pics show.

Smoothed out her skin on this rough sketch-soon to be detailed and refined.

Even though the rough look on the skin is easy to chase out in wax, I tend to like the smooth look on the skin. I confirmed that on this sculpt. She was instantly much prettier once I smoothed the skin (primarily in the face, hands look okay rough so I may incorporate that in some of my sculpts). It’ll look ultra smooth and glowing once she goes into bronze.

Leg will be positioned back towards her body and slenderized.

Right now I’m taking a two week break from this sculpture and working on another project, refining a wax.

After viewing photos, gallery asked about a nude version for her.... with the hat....

Soon I’ll see about whether I’m going to do a nude version of her with a hat or not. From the front, I don’t think it will be pleasing to just have two breasts all exposed. Tasteful nudity is fine but in this case, I don’t think complete nudity will look good.

If I do a nude version, I’m considering having her holding the shawl (the same one that will be in the clothed version but wrapped around her back) near her breasts to slightly conceal them. Most women would like to have the wrap or shawl that they had on while walking around, right up there next to their bosom. It just a natural thing to do. It makes you feel covered, kind of, or at least to have something to wrap up in after your done bathing in the sunshine.

I want the sculpt to have a playful feeling of freedom and peace, so I don’t want her to really look like she’s got anything to conceal, so even though I said the above, I may have to rethink it. I can have the shawl in such a way that it just softens the nudity but doesn’t look like she is trying to conceal.

Well, anyway, it’s a work in progress and I wanted to share it with you!

~Tamara

I’m sculpting a lady relaxing in a beautiful setting reading her favorite book. Here’s the story: After a year of sculpting detail and careful attention to every little thing, you know what feels absolutely wonderful? To sculpt with freedom of who cares about this and that, just do it! I gave myself a free pass to play this weekend because….

….. I originally was supposed to work on fixing a wax of the small Beautiful Dreamer. Remember that I finished (took me 11 months) the enlarged Beautiful Dreamer? Well, that was because the small one was way too difficult for the foundry to reproduce, (another story). On top of that, the mold had ripped because the feet were included in the main part of the mold and was not reinforced with fiberglass and just tore off.

Long story short, I have a very damaged wax that came from the mold and need to fix it up and have a new mold made (by the foundry since they’ve taken some responsibility for this). Instead of clunking along (not a word, I know) with all my dental tools, heating them up on a flame in order to carve and drip the wax, I decided to purchase the top of the line Kerr Ultra Waxer and that will be here on Wednesday.

Hence, the weekend was here and I must do something while I wait for the Ultra Waxer to come! What to do but play in the clay! In June I have a little show here in my hometown and the title is “Beautiful Impressions.” I’ll be paired up with an impressionist watercolor artist. Thought I’d do a quick, “impressionistic,” sculpt for that.

I’ve got this big kiln with inside dimensions of about 29″ X 30″ roughly. Haven’t had the opportunity to sculpt big but definitely want to. Kind of different working larger, just a bit more physically challenging but well worth the effort to have something more substantial/larger.

Sculpted this lady laying down reading a book. With her hat on she’s over 30″. Hopefully she’ll shrink an inch or more before going in the kiln. I sort of doubt she will so I’m going to have to get creative, maybe tilt the kiln shelf to get her in.

Here’s a pic of her, quickie face, quickie body and if it ain’t perfect, I don’t care! Yay, I’m freeeee! Ha, ha. Well, to tell you the truth, I feel almost sucked in to doing complete refinement and bring out the beauty completely in the face and detail the anatomy just so but I’m resisting because I have two other sculpts I need to finish out in detail. This one must be a quickie. I have to be resolute in that (please help me ) LOL! I’m a recovering detailaholic! But really, I do love doing detail but I also love doing sketches and will do more of these for the soul.

Arms not sculpted as yet but quick sketch is coming along!

I worked out the arms a bit more than the above pic showed and then just put her clothes over it. If I was really doing this for serious sculpture, as in meaning going into something like bronze, I would have worked out the anatomy much further before adding clothing.

Head sliced off in order to attach the hat.

Sliced off her head and scooped out the clay in the head a bit more for firing purposes (to have thinner clay walls). Scooped out the inside of the hat, scored the edges, applied slip and attached it to her head. Best to slice the head off because if I was to attach her rim of the hat without doing that, I’d have to work the clay in along the seam line and mess up her hair that I sculpted.

Getting the sculpture's clothes put on.

Will post more pics when I finish her, hopefully today. Thanks for reading!

~Tamara

Edit-  See a new post about her!

Pouring wax for bronze is a very important part of the process. I’ve had one foundry pour the awful-est (is that a word?) waxes and told me this was due to my highly detailed work.  NOT!  One reason for bubbles is because of using reclaimed wax (wax that has been used before) rather than virgin wax…….. Jessie Rodriguez, from Roseville, CA, poured me excellent waxes with very few bubbles.  I’d highly recommend his foundry services to anyone interested.

Note some of the techniques he shared as seen in the pics below.

Sauce pan with bent edge for pouring in background.

Jessie first heats up the two halves of the silicone mold and then clamps them together and quickly pours the wax in. In the background of the picture you can see the sauce pan that he made just right, with bent edge spout, for pouring into the larger molds. The handle was nice a sturdy to hold while pouring.

Paper cup used to pour wax in small molds.

For small molds Jessie likes to use a waxed paper cup as a pouring cup. Note that he didn’t even wait to put in the nuts and bolts but immediately poured the wax in to the warm mold. This means the wax will flow very nicely into all the detail.

Clamps and bolts used on some molds.

After the wax is already poured in on these small molds, and tapping until bubbles come to the surface (indicating trapped air is coming out which is good so that we don’t have air bubbles to fix later), then he bolts the piece together. For a couple of the very small molds, the clamps were sufficient and no bolts used. However, for most of the small molds, he would bolt them together to tighten up the seam lines (otherwise more work is created with a heavy seam line showing that needs to be removed during chasing out the wax).

VENVM PB wax box comes as little pellets of wax.

Since his waxes came out nearly perfect on my extremely detailed piece (and other waxes he’s made for me have been superb), using the wax he used is a good idea instead of messing around with waxes that may or may not be as good. Here’s the name of the wax, VENVM PB from Westech Products 1242 Enterprise Court, Corona, Ca. 92882, 951-279-4496.

Warming silicone mold with blowdryer.

Here again, he’s warming both sides of the mold. Then he poured some of the detail areas that would tend to get air trapped such as the hair tendrils, face, ruffles of dress and the feet.

Remote detail areas such as the feet are poured first.

Hair tendrils are poured before putting mold halves together.

Clever of him to use a chair that rotates and place molds onto them while rotating the wax in the mold. A mold is very heavy with wax poured in so it takes a strong chair to work well (and strong guy/guys). Notice what an art piece this chair is becoming! All the drips are building up to look quite interesting.:-)

Just look at this decked out wax chair.

I like the idea of taping down tar paper to the floor to catch the wax. Looks like they are due to pull it up and replace though!

Tar papered floor covered in wax.

Warm the mold with halves separate on the large molds and then again after the two halves are put together and bolted together.

Warm mold after halves put together as well.

Sauce pan fit just right in the crock pot for dipping in and getting a good amount of wax to pour into the mold.

Sauce pan works great as ladle for pouring wax.

Pour the wax on one side then the next, and all around. Then rotate the mold on the swivel chair. Tap the mold to release bubbles. First coat is poured at about 200 degrees.

Pours wax on all four sides and rotates mold.

Rotates mold on rotating swivel chair.

Pour out all the liquid wax in the mold, back into the crock pot. Be sure to keep allowing every last drip off wax to pour out from the remotest area of the mold, the head, (which is at the bottom of the mold). If this isn’t done, then the head will end up being filled with more and more wax with each wax layer and remember…… the end product of a good wax should only be 1/4″ thick walls!  If the head is cast solid, it can cause shrinking and cracking of the head in the bronze.  Very bad news to try and fix that with metal chasing.

Pours out wax after rotating and tapping for awhile.

Next wax layer is poured at about 170 degrees and then next one as well. Then Jessie took a big scoop of wax in the sauce pan and let it sit outside of the crock pot in order to have it cool for the 4th layer. Having the wax cooler will allow the wax to really stick.

Another coat of wax poured at cooler temp.

Final coat is poured with a reclaimed wax. You might have seen the wax in one of the pics in a large rectangular deep fryer. This wax is made up of all kinds of remnants of wax that have been used on other projects, etc. It is a green color but that’s just because of all the different waxes in it making it that color. This coat is put on very cool and thick until 1/4″ wall is achieved.

Allow the mold to cool for several hours. He sometimes sets them outside in the mountain air. There is a fine line, though, between having the mold cool nicely for demolding and getting it too cold and thus brittle for demolding.

Sometimes he will take off one half of the mother mold and maybe pull up just a section of the silicone to help the mold to cool. Later, when removing the silicone from the wax, it’s important to slowly and carefully pull off the silicone without tearing highly detailed thin areas. It seems that with every demold, small bits and pieces of mold are ripped off. By the time the edition of sculpture is part ways through, the mold has degraded some. The more pieces torn off equals the more work in the wax stage to touch up these areas.

Lessons I’ve learned: Be sure and find a wonderful foundry that pours excellent waxes. Take extra care to sculpt in such a way that you know the finished product is something that can be chased out by a foundry worker rather than being so detailed that I need to chase each one. I need to be spending my time making new sculpture for heaven’s sake! I will learn these things one day!

Thanks for viewing my blog and I enjoy your feedback and comments too!

~Tamara