Victorian Belsnickel - Part 12

I had a busy week, but still managed to make some progress on the Victorian Belsnickel project.  A couple of posts ago I showed that I had tried sculpting hands for the doll.  Unfortunately, the hand I sculpted from bake in the oven clay burned in the oven.  It was very disappointing.  Next time I will try some different clay.  Anyway, sculpting the one hand took over four hours so I was not overly enthused about sculpting more hands at the moment.  Sometimes projects drag on for a long time and I tend to get bored with them.

I tried a couple of options for the hands.  A traditional Victorian Belsnickel is sometimes shown with his hands shoved into his sleeves.  Some people have postulated that this pose is showing that he is trying to warm his hands.  Yes, it does show that, but I suspect that the man reason is because making realistic hands is difficult.  Sewing the sleeves together so that the hands are not visible is one simple way of not having to deal with hands.   I was actually thinking about that for the next option, but I did not make add the extra length to the sleeves neededto make them meet in the front of the doll when I was making the the coat.  When I tried putting the sleeves together it made the arms look a little short.  So, on to the next plan.

I went to the old standby of mittens.  It is disappointing, but at least it allows me to get on with the doll.  I suppose I could have made cloth hands, but they would be a big let down after the hand I sculpted out of clay.  I was actually rather proud of the hand that I sculpted.  Anyway, mittens were made and sewn onto the doll.  Time to get this project moving again.

The coat is on the doll, but the hood is not yet up.  I have not yet added the trim for the front of the coat or the short cape that goes over the shoulders.  They will be next and then the doll will be close to finished.  The stand needs to have holes drilled in it for inserting the dowels that will hold the doll upright.  After that, the doll will be mounted into the stand.  Then, a few accessories and the doll will be finished.

I am working on an accessory that I hope will help tell the story of the Belsnickel.  A doll standing by itself is just a doll.  By adding the accessories I will be adding information to the doll.  The Belsnickel is a figure of folklore.  He is not a traditional Santa.  He does bring treats like Santa, but he also brings switches and coal for naughty children.  Unlike Santa who comes while everyone is asleep, the Belsnickel comes while the children are awake.  If they have been good they get a treat.  If they have been naughty they get a wallop with a switch.  The Belsnickel is a Germanic folklore figure, but the legend travel to America with German immigrants.  While researching on this figure I came across a family story of a visit by a Belsnickel.  I went back briefly to try to find the story again so I could add a link to it, but did not come across it.  That is the trouble with surfing the web, you never can remember which rabbit hole you went down while researching something.  I will recap the story here.  It said that the girl was so frightened by the Belsnickel that she hid under the bed and that the Belsnickel came and dragged her out from there.  She had a look of terror on her face and after the Belsnickel left, that expression never left her face.  It may have been that she had a stroke.  Or it may have been a family story they told to explain a facial deformity.  In any case, it illustrates the fear that children had of a visit from the Belsnickel.  

Check back on Thursday for the latest (and possibly the finish) of this project.

Victorian Belsnickel - Part 11

Doll covered to protect clothing.

Today I am blogging about adding the beard and hair to my Belsnickel doll.  I have been working on the doll for weeks now and adding the hair and beard is one of the things that really makes the doll.  Until now, the doll could be just about anything.  The long white hair and beard is one of the things (besides the red suit) that brands this as a Santa or (in this case) a Belsnickel.

I began by wrapping the doll in some plastic bags to protect the clothing from the wool roving and/or strings of hot glue that tend to get everywhere. Pro tip here:  keep a lint roller handy because wool roving is loose wool and it gets all over you and all over your work surface.  The lint roller not only gets the roving off of your clothes, but it can also be used to clean up your work space.  A lint roller is also useful in picking up small bits of clay that fell during the sculpting of the doll.

Just as there are multiple ways to perform the same task on a computer, there are multiple ways to add hair to a doll.  In some cases, a wig is made and glued to the doll head.  In other cases, the hair might be sewn or glued directly to the head.  The choice is made on many factors, including time, the material of the doll, and comfort level with the techniques.  For this doll, I chose to use hot glue.

First row of beard.

Using hot glue has advantages and disadvantages.  The advantages are that the materials stick together quickly and that the glue has more holding power than low temperature glue.  One of the disadvantages of hot glue is that it tends to have stringy tendrils of glue that get all over the place if you are not careful.  The other disadvantage is that you can get a bad burn when pressing the glue and the materials together or by accidentally coming in contact with the tip of the glue gun.   

The blue silicone finger tips that I blogged about a couple of blog posts ago were really helpful in preventing burns.  Once the glue dried it peeled right off the silicone.  That was a big help especially since I was working with the wool roving which was sticking to the glue.  I think I will buy some more of those next time I am at the craft store.

Please keep scrolling below the photos to see more text.  I am having one of those days where the blog platform will not allow me to place photos where I want to place them.

Second row.

I started by adding the beard because I had a plan for some of the beard hair.  I start with hair much longer than I plan to have for the finished beard.  The beard will need to be trimmed eventually.  If you start with hair that is the length of your planned finished beard you will have less leeway when it comes to trimming.  If you have ever cut someone's hair you may have experienced the phenomenon of cutting one side then the other side is too short, then going back and trimming the other side to match but that is too crooked, and so on. Now you know why I start with a longer beard.  

On the first row of the beard, I cut a strand twice the length I want and fold the strand in half.  Then I glue a row on along the jaw line.  This row will soon be covered with other strands of wool roving and the glued section will not be seen.  By doubling the strand, it builds volume on the beard while using less roving. 

Third row, mustache, and first layer of hair.

The next line of roving will be applied in a different matter.  The method is a little more difficult, but the look of the beard line is better.  Timing is of the essence in this technique, with dexterity running a close second.  A small dab of hot glue is applied to the doll's face.  The glue gun is pulled away by pulling down in the direction of the beard.  That way, any glue strands that do form are lost in the beard rather than getting on the part of the doll's face that will be exposed.  (If you do get glue on the face, take it off immediately before it dries.  It is much harder to remove once the glue has dried.)  Immediately after applying the glue, add the wool roving in the following manner.  Lay the roving over the doll's face in the opposite direction from the beard.  Attach the tip end of the roving by pressing it into the glue.  One the glue has set, fold the hair down in the direction of the beard.  This gives a more realistic appearance to the beard because the fold will cover the glue line. 

Full head of hair.

The third line of the beard hair will come just under the cheeks, below the lips and end at the tips of the mouth.  Fill in any gaps or cover any areas where glue is showing from the previous  rows of hair.  Keep working until things look right.  It is probably best not to overdo this layer.  If it gets too thick the beard may be thicker than you need it to be.

After the beard, it is time for the mustache.  Cut a small strand and attach the roving under the nose.  Once again, cut the mustache longer than its finished length.  If it is cut too short, the mustache will bristle rather than laying close against the beard. 


More text and a photo below.  I cannot make the blog perform today.  It will not let me move the paragraphs around either. 

Once the facial hair is complete, it was time to start on the hair.  I trimmed some of the hair from the end of the beard.  I will probably trim more later.  The Belsnickel is supposed to look scruffy and rumpled.  He will need a long beard.  His beard will probably need more trimming, but I want to see it in relation to the clothing before I trim more.  I used the trimmed roving to glue to the head for the first layer of the hair.  Just as thin hair on a human head will show the pink scalp beneath, a doll's head will show whatever layer is beneath the hair.  By gluing a layer of hair to the bare head, it will help disguise the pink color of the head.  I could actually have stopped at this point.  The glued hair looks like short hair. And besides, this doll will be wearing a hood when his clothing is added.  However, I decided to go the full hair treatment.

Back of the head not combed yet.

The next layer of hair is added in rows, starting at the bottom of the hair line at the back of the neck and working upwards.  The strands of the first row can be a little shorter than the other rows.  With each row, add a little more length so that the hair will match the beginning row.   This technique works until you get to the top rows of hair around the ears and forehead.  For the final rows the technique of laying the hair across the face, gluing the tip of the wool roving, then folding the roving back into the hair is used.  If you are careful with the glue, and push the fold edge of the roving slightly forward you should not be able to see the glue line.

After that, more trimming of the hair and beard is needed.  That is about where I am on this doll now.  Afterwards, I will dress the doll.  Once I see how it looks in its clothing I will know better where to trim the beard.  I also have to make a few accessories for the doll.  Once they are complete, it will be time to mount the doll on it's stand. 

Check back next blog post to see the latest on the doll on Sunday.

 

Victorian Belsnickel - Part 10

Wire armature and fingers.

Base layer of the hand.

I had a quiet day on Friday, so I decided that since I had a fair amount of time I would try to work on the hands.  Sometimes I have great ideas, but whether I can pull them off is another question.  In this case it was an almost.  As my father used to tell me, "Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."  And hereby hangs the tale of my sculpting a hand.  I did sculpt a hand.  As things went along I began to question whether my armature was going to be strong enough for my plan to have the hand grasping a bunch of switches.  The armature not only supports the clay, it needs to be strong enough to hold the accessories as well. Sometimes you have to change the plan.  There is a surprise ending to this, not necessarily a good one.  But, for those interested in creating doll hands I have provided the photos of the building of the hand. 

I was following the directions in one of the books I recommended earlier, Sculpting Lifelike Figures in Polymer Clay by Katherine Dewey.  I will say that her directions were very good, but it took me a while to understand her explanation of modeling unit, a measuring device for making sure that your bits of clay are equal measures.  After that, the directions were easy to follow. 

Adding depth.

The first delay was a trip to the craft store.  I needed to have a certain type of vinyl glue.  Regular white glue specifically states that it is not to be heated.  Polymer clay is a bake in the oven clay so white glue could not be used.  Once I had the glue, the wires that form the hand armature needed to be coated with two coats of the glue.  The glue took a while to dry.  I had to do one coat in the morning and the other in the late afternoon and leave it overnight. 

Creating the knuckles and adding muscle.

Knuckles and positioning the thumb.

Next was sculpting the fingers.  It was a case of easier said than done.  When you are working on a doll, the hand is not overly large.  Trying to get detail in a small size is not easy.  It takes a lot of persistence to get it to look right.  Or perhaps I was just over thinking the whole thing.  After the fingers you build up the hands.  Lumps of clay were added to create depth.  Lumps of clay were added to create the knuckles, and palms.  Lines were sculpted in to create detail for the fingers, knuckles, and tendons.  As with the face, it is not just a case of slap on some clay and you are done.  Each little lump of clay must be pushed, prodded, caressed and stroked into the shape you want it to be.  Each finger had to be rolled individually.  It takes a while.  In fact, this one hand, scarcely bigger than the diameter of a quarter took me four and a half hours, not counting the baking.  One hand took me an entire morning.  Not having sculpted hands on an armature before, I had no real idea of how long it would take.  I had hoped to be finished with both of them.

Hand in position to hold the bundle of switches.

And then I baked the hand.  And that is where the surprise ending happened.  Polymer clay is wonderful when it comes out right, but awful when it comes out wrong.  If you don't bake the clay enough, it will crumble.  If you bake it too long it will scorch.  And that is what happened with this hand.  It was baked on a bedding of polyester fiberfill as per the books directions, but apparently one place did not have enough padding and has a bad burn mark.  I must say it was a leap of faith to use this bedding of fiberfill in the oven.  I was worried that I was going to set the oven, if not the kitchen on fire.  Not only did it scorch, the entire hand baked an entirely different color from the face, even though it was made from the same batch of clay.  I was very disappointed.  I did not think the hand came out half bad for a first attempt and making it. 

Hand burned in the oven.

It is possible that I could salvage the hand by sanding the burnt area and painting it.  However, by this time I was questioning whether the wire armature in the arm was going to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the hand and the bunch of switches.  (Note: the wire you see on the hand is not the wire armature for the arm.)  Another consideration was the switches themselves.  To have a bunch of switches that were proportional to the doll meant that the bits of wood needed to be very tiny.  That meant that the pieces would be brittle.  I considered making the switches from clay with a wire armature but they would still be small enough that I would have to consider breakage.  Time to rethink my idea.

Note the color differential in the clay. 

So I do have a new, more traditional idea for the Victorian Belsnickel.  I need to finish the beard and hair, then I will be blogging more about the change in plans.  And then I will begin working on accessories for the piece.  Check back Thursday for the latest on the doll.

Victorian Belnickel - Part 9

Head glued to body with hot glue.

Well, I had hoped to have the doll's hands sculpted today, but the weather was not cooperative.  Another winter storm came through and the temperature was not warm enough to open up for ventilation.  The bake in the oven clay is rather odoriferous and needs good ventilation.  I did not want to sculpt the hands before I was ready to bake them.  I decided to wait until a better day.  I still have plenty of work to do on the doll, so I do have something new to add to the blog. 

Muslin collar glued to neck and sewn to body.

Silicone finger covers protect fingers from hot glue.

I have attached the doll head to the body.  That may not seem like such a task, but it took the better part of the morning.  First off, the neck was created hollow to help with inserting the wire stem that is the main support for the head.  The head above the neck is a different story.  Regular readers may remember that the armature for the head is rock solid.  It took quite a bit to bore a hole in it deep enough to insert the wire into the head armature.  I did not use a power tool because I was afraid I might accidentally drill though the head or have the tool skip and damage the neck.  I just used a pair of needle nose and pushed my way through the head.  This has to be done very carefully as well to make sure that I don't wreck the head I spent so many hours creating.  It was a bit nerve racking.  However, I was able to make a deep enough hole for the armature without damaging the head. 
C
After making sure that I was able to position the head as I wanted I filled the hole with hot glue and inserted the wire.  I held the head in place until the glue had hardened and the head would not shift.  Once the glue was dry I added another bead of glue all the way around the neck to secure the head to the torso.  At this point it is noticeable that the head is just sitting on the neck.  That will be less obvious when clothing is added to the doll.

The head is secure, but I like to add an extra measure to make sure the head is securely fastened to the doll.  I cut a piece of scrap muslin on the bias and hot glued it to the base of the neck.  Then I sewed the bottom edge of the muslin to the torso of the doll.  Someone could get the doll apart, but they are really going to have to work at it.  I like to add the extra feature because you never know who will get their hands on the doll. Technically, this is an art doll.  It is meant to be looked at, not played with.  However, you never know when a curious child might get hold of it and start pulling on it. 

I found a product at the craft store that was helpful in working with the hot glue.  I cannot tell if they are a brand new product, but the product is new to my local craft store.  I ran across them on my latest trip there.  They are silicone finger protectors.  They were made to protect your fingers from burning them with hot glue.  Regular readers will probably remember that many times over the years I have mentioned that I burned my fingers on hot glue.  The silicone finger covers come three to a package for $4.99.  They are all the size of the largest finger cover in the photo.  I had to cut a couple down because my fingers are short.  The silicone cut easily with a pair of scissors.  If you plan to be working with hot glue, you might find this product worthwhile.

At this point, I will probably go ahead and start adding the hair and beard before I get to work on the hands.  It depends on how much time I have during the next week.  Although it is still winter, I can tell that the days are getting longer and my schedule is getting busier.  Time passes much to quickly. 

Just to end on a funny note: when I was working with the photographs in Windows, it kept asking me if I wanted to tag the photo.  The computer thought it was a human.  Check back Sunday for the next post.

Some Recent Sketches 2/16

I have been working on the Victorian Belsnickel project and last blog post I showed that I had completed baking the doll's head.  I was just getting ready to start sculpting the doll's hands but I needed to take a bit of a break.  My hands, especially my right hand was becoming irritated from so much use.  I decided to give my hands a few days to recover.  It is better to take a few days to rest than to press on with the work and have my hand become seriously swollen and inflamed and have to take a longer break.  I expect to get back to sculpting tomorrow.  

In the mean time, I thought I would post the three sketches I have completed recently.  One of my goals for this year was to draw and/or paint a picture on a small art tile at least once a week in order to improve my drawing and painting skills.  I showed the first set of art tiles a few weeks ago in the blog.  I painted those.  This time I only drew with a pencil rather than painting what I had drawn.  I was so busy with the Victorian Belsnickel project that I did not want to spend as much time on them.  Also, I want to improve my drawing skills as well as painting skills so I decided that this group would just be done only in pencil. 

It is a little intimidating to put my drawings on the blog.  None of these pictures are masterpieces.  However, I find that making a commitment to show my work keeps me on track in trying to improve it.  It is all too easy to decide to skip drawing and painting in pursuit of other projects, especially if I get discouraged with the drawings.  So here is the latest batch of sketches.  I hope they will encourage you to work on something artistic today. 

Victorian Belsnickel - Part 8

Aluminum foil armature.

Armature covered with clay.

I am late getting onto the blog today. I woke up with a plan.  In a moment of irony, the universe decided that my plan was going to go out the window.  As I scanned the local newspaper while eating breakfast, I saw the a horoscope on the last page.  It said something to the effect that it was not safe to assume that everything was on track.  Really, I am not making this up.  Part of my plan was to make the main dish for dinner this morning because it is something that takes a long time to make.  That way I would not be so rushed this afternoon.  It is one of those dishes that sounds so simple, essentially a spoonbread with onions, bell peppers, and cheese added, but it seems to take every bowl in the kitchen, and most of the small appliances.  Part of the meal is processed in a food processor.  The latch on the food processor broke.  I had to pull out the blender to get things mixed to the right consistency.  It took a lot longer with the blender.  Along the way, I found out that I did not have enough of a key ingredient for dinner tomorrow night.  I will need to make a trip to the store sometime today.  And on it goes.  So I am now starting to blog at the time I am usually finishing and hitting publish.  Well, sometime that is how things goes.  My apologies to people that came online trying to read it early.

Adding the nose.

Before I get started on the latest on the doll, I have one more thing to say.  I am celebrating today.  My blog has just reached it's 10,000th  page view.  Compared to some of the blogs out there, that is not much.  But this is a personal blog, and they don't have the same type of readership that blogs related to news or television programs have, so this is a big deal for me.  It means that a lot of readers have taken the time to click on my blog and at least look at what I have put up there.  I find that encouraging.  If readers would like to leave comments or ask questions I would be happier still.  I would like the blog to be more interactive.

Eyes pressed into the clay.

Now on to the Victorian Belsnickel.  This week I have been working on making the face out of bake in the oven polymer clay.  I am not going to give a full account of all the measuring and shaping that goes on  because it is just too much to put in a blog post.  There is plenty of information online about this and the books I recommended in the earlier posts have very detailed instructions on this.  I do hope to show the different stages of the build and give a few thoughts on them.  I ask that readers remember that I am still learning this craft and that they won't expect perfection.  Learning the skill of making accurate faces takes a while.  The only way to get any better at it is to do it until you aquire skill in the techniques.

Once cheek smoothed and one ready to add to the face.

I have a mantra that I use when I am making a clay head:  "It's not finished until it is finished."  A head is built up from numerous layers of clay.  Each layer is shaped and reshaped many times over the course of making the head.  At one point it looks right then you add clay in a different area and then you have to reshape the first layer to look right in relation to the layer you just added.  It is a long process.  Along the way it is normal for me to think that this is never going to work.  I just have to keep encouraging myself through it until I reach something that I think I can accept.

Before baking.

After baking.

Before you add clay, you have to have an armature for the clay to go onto.  The head is not made out of solid clay.  The clay rests over the armature.  For a head, the basic armature is an egg shape.  I made an egg out of aluminum foil.  I have seen it recommended in one book to use the clay over a styrofoam ball.  I have never seen styrofoam used with bake in the oven clay so I am not comfortable on using the styrofoam in the oven until I learn more about it.  I guess that will be research for another day.  For this project I folded and wrapped numerous layers of aluminum foil until I had a very firm egg shape.  I rolled, pushed, mashed, pressed the foil until it had an egg shape that was firm enough to stand up to the layering of the clay.  You can't just ball up some foil and say that you are ready to go.  I spent about forty minutes shaping the ball until it was firm by rolling it between my hands, pushing it against the table,  and prodding it with my thumbs.  Just another note on the armature at this point.  Remember to make it a little smaller than your planned your finished size because you will be adding clay and eventually hair on top of it.  Expect the size of the head to grow as you progress with the build.  You always have to be thinking ahead when making the armature.

After the armature was as I wanted it to be, I added a layer of clay.  This clay is a mix of 2 parts flesh tone to one part of translucent clay.  In previous heads, I have found that the flesh tone alone bakes to a darker color than I wanted.  Those dolls seem to be a little too tanned, especially if I am making a winter doll like a Santa or a Belsnickel.  The clay has to be kneaded together and made pliable before you start putting the clay on the doll.  It is very stiff when you first start out.  I find that it is helpful to put the clay in a plastic bag and put it in my pocket for a while so that it softens a little bit before beginning the conditioning process.  As the clay softens I start kneading and mixing the clay.  Then I start running it through a craft "pasta" machine to make smooth blended sheets of clay to work with.  (If you don't have a clay pasta machine, use a rolling pin that you have dedicated to craft use only.  Never use a utensil you plan to use with food.)  This is not a once and you are done process.  I may run it through the clay machine about thirty times.  It takes a long time to get the clay well blended.  If you don't blend it well enough, you might find spots that did not blend will show up in the baked product as a spot of a lighter or darker color.  One light spot ended up on the face.  In this case, it will be covered by the beard, so it is not going to be a problem.

After the sheets of clay are placed over the armature the seams are rubbed until the armature is smoothly covered with clay.  Then the build up begins.  More clay is added to build up the forehead.  The nose is added and shaped.  ( Expect to be shaping and reshaping features throughout the build.)  Eyes are added along with eye lids.  Then the mouth and whatever that little piece is called under the nose.  Cheeks and ears.  And so on.  Eventually it starts to look like a face.  This takes a while.  I worked on it for seven and a half hours over two days, before I reached something I was comfortable with.  I tried to add a few character lines along the eyes and the forehead, but I did not make them deep enough and they more or less faded out during the baking process.

Once the features were on, I added the neck.  The neck was created by a roll of foil covered with clay.  More clay was added to attache the neck to the head.  Many times in doll making a head is made from an egg shape and no neck is used.  Since the face of the doll will have a beard and the back of the head will be covered with a hood it would not be very noticeable if the neck was missing.  However, I am trying to improve my sculpting skill so I added the neck.  The roll of the neck is hollow.  The wire armature from the doll torso will extend up through the neck and into the head when it is placed on the body.  

I find that at some point you have to stop working on a head.  If you keep working beyond a certain point, I just start messing things up.  This is somewhat like painting.  If you keep adding and adding you have lost the original form of the painting.  Once I worked on it until I thought I could not do more, I baked the doll in the oven.  Truth be told, this head was larger that most heads I work on so I baked it in my regular oven because I was afraid it would scorch in the toaster oven.  I ran the cleaning cycle afterwards as is recommended.  Note that the color of the clay deepened slightly after it was baked.

As usual, there are always some things I could have done better.  The nose is a little wide at the tip.  On this head, I think I should have done a better job of the eye lids.  The eyes are a little wider open than eyes would normally be on a human.  In fact, now that I think of it they look like the eyes on a doll that has closeable eye lids.  They are either wide open or closed.  Next doll I will concentrate harder on trying to get the eyelids to look right.  I could go in and try to add them to this doll and re-bake the head but I decided that I did not want to attempt it on this doll.  If the clay baked a different color it might look stranger than the wide eyes.  I am going to use the head as it because once the eyebrows, beard, mustache, and hair are added it might not be such an obvious flaw.

So I have done as much as I am prepared to do on the head.  Next I start working on the hands.  This will be my first time building hands over an armature.  I will be blogging about that as the next part of the process of making the doll.  Check back on Sunday for the next blog post.

Victorian Belsnickel - Part 7

Eye balls and ball tool.

Painted eyes.

When I stopped blogging last time, I had just finished baking the polymer clay eye balls.  It took a good portion of the morning to get to that point.  Today I will be blogging of my results on my experiments with making the eyes in this manner.  But first, I want to clarify about the process that I did not explain clearly yesterday.  As I said previously, I am making these eyes after seeing some instructions on the internet for how to make polymer clay eyes look like glass eyes.  The person on the internet used some sort of metal tool that was essentially a small oval shaped cookie cutter to cut the eyes out of a slab of clay.  This was quicker, but to my mind it did not take on the round shape of the eye.  And if you make differently sized dolls, you would need a different cutter for each doll as the eyes are sized to be a specific proportion of the face.  Because I did not have such a tool, and because I am building up the face by sculpting the clay, I came up with the idea for making the eyeballs the correct size by using the circle template. This is just what I came up with when I addressed the problem of how I could make appropriately sized eyes for this doll. There are many ways to make eyes for dolls.  The books I recommended in the last blog post have some other ideas for making eyes.  The method chosen depends on how you choose to work and how many dolls you plan to make.

Liquid clay added to pupils.

After heating the liquid polymer.

Anyway, once I baked the eyes, I was on to following the instructions on how to make polymer clay eyes look like glass eyes.  Other than the deviation on how to make the eye balls, everything was done as I saw it on the internet. The person on the internet made many eyes at one time because the process is not exact and there seems to be high percentage chance that the clay will not cure as expected.  The person filled a glazed tile with eyes for the project.  I am not sure if the tiles was 6 x 6 inches or 9x9 inches, but there were quite a number of sets of eyes.  I made five sets of eyes and hoped that it would be enough for me to draw some conclusions about the project.  After all, if it works, I have something that improves the quality of my doll making.  If it does not work, I have wasted a little time but still learned something in the process.   

On with making the eyes.  The ball tools were essential to the process of painting as well as to making the impression for the pupils.  The ball tool of the size used to create the impression was dipped in black paint and pressed into the pupil area.  The same ball tool was dipped in dark blue paint and painted around the pupil to create the dark park of the iris.  After that paint was dry, a smaller ball tool was used to paint a lighter color paint for the inner part of the iris.  Because I am experimenting, I used a paint brush on a couple of eyes to see if it made a difference in the painting.  Hands down, the ball tool won because it was easier to make a consistent round shape with the ball tool. 

Once the paint was completely dry, it was time for the next step.  Liquid polymer clay was placed into the pupil indentation using a small dropper bottle.  The indentation was filled until it formed a small dome of liquid clay that completely filled the pupil.  The clay is milk white when it goes in.  In theory, once it is heated, the liquid polymer clay turns clear.  The clear polymer is reflective and should look reflect light which gives it depth and dimension that is not there with just craft paint.

Following the instructions I found on the internet, I heated the eyeballs with a craft heat tool by holding the heat tool above the eyes and moving it back and forth until the liquid polymer became dry and clear.  Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did not work well.  I did get some eyes that turned clear, but I had to hold the heat on them so closely and for so long that the white parts of the eyeballs scorched.  (That can be remedied by painting the scorched area white.)  It took several minutes per set of eyes.  Some of the eyes did not turn completely clear and retained a faint translucence in the center even after heating them for more than thirty minutes.  In was the case in both my experiment and the instructions on the internet there were many eyes that did not turn clear.  But I did get some usable eyes out of it.  If you wish to try this, I recommend making many eyes at one time so that you will get several usable pairs. 

I wondered whether baking the eyes in the oven would help make the translucent eyes turn clear. I used the recommended temperature for baking this clay, 275 degrees Fahrenheit.  I did not want to do it any higher because the clay will scorch.  I gave the eyes thirty minutes, but only one more eye turned clear.  I don't think the temperature was hot enough to create the change.  Or possibly, once the outer clay hardens, it does not allow enough heat to get to the interior.  At any rate, the rest of the eyes were not usable.

The eyes do reflect a good deal of light and have some depth that plain painted eyes do not have.  They are not perfect, but then, I am rarely satisfied. Crafted eyes are never going to look completely real.  I think my real complaint is that the pupils seem too large.  I am not sure that using a smaller ball tool would have improved the situation any because the dome of clay would have been smaller and disproportionate to the eye.  I guess that will be an experiment for another day.
  
Once finished with that experiment, my thoughts turned to whether there was a way to salvage the eyes that did not turn clear.  The good news is yes there is a way to make them usable.  The liquid clay is paintable once it is dry.  I painted the pupils with black paint.  Once the paint was dry, I gave the entire eye a coat of a high gloss gel medium.  The shiny medium does reflect a lot of light and the domed area of the pupil gives the eye a lifelike appearance.  So the time spent on making the eyes is not a total loss even when the eyes did not turn clear.  I did give one set of eyes the white dots of paint that are often used to represent reflections in painted eyes.  I don't think that is necessary if using the gloss gel.  The gel shows lots of reflections.

I did try one other experiment.  I wondered if I painted part of the pupil with the lighter blue color would make the pupils look smaller and of a more normal size.  That did not work.  Painting the domed area a lighter color emphasized the dome shape.  It did not look normal.  It looked like an eye you would see on a reptile.  However, if you are planning on making a Chameleon or an Iguana, this would work for you.

Now that the eyes have been worked as far as can be, I will be working on sculpting the head.  I will write more about it this week.

Victorian Belsnickel - Part 6 and Some Book Recommendations

Clay log, clay pieces, and cutting blade.

I guess I would have to say that I was a bit over optimistic in my last blog post.  I had hoped to have the head and hands created by now, but once beginning I found that it was taking longer than I thought.  Not only that, but I have recently joined a couple of groups that meet weekly.  That is taking up a significant amount of my time that is usually spent crafting.  That is all to the good though.  It is important to have some social time as well as craft time.  However, I have made some progress and will write about that below.  But, before that, I wanted to make a couple of book recommendations that will help people interested in creating dolls or parts of dolls from polymer clay.

Once again I have to apologize for the picture placement.  The blog platform will not allow me to place the pictures where I want to place them.  This happens when I am writing a long post for some reason.  Please continue reading below to read the rest of the post.

Eye ball measured by the circle template

One of the reasons some people are reluctant to try to make dolls is that they have trouble getting the face to look right and the head proportionate to the body.  It is not quite as easy as just making a circle and putting some eyes on it and sticking it on a body.  One of the things that you see a lot with new doll makers is that the nose is way to long, and the forehead too short.  There are books that have a lot of information on how to make things right.  I use two books regularly now.  Each is helpful in its own way.
 

Baked eyes

The first book I would like to recommend is Family and Friends in Polymer Clay by Maureen Carlson.  This is a good book for beginners as well as for more advanced doll makers.  This book takes on the challenge of not only making proportionate faces and bodies, it is about making faces that look like someone you know, which is even harder than just making a face. But I like this book because it talks about how to see shapes of heads and faces, create expressions, and how to exaggerate those shapes to form a face that looks like a caricature particular person.  I think beginners will like it because the humorous faces will seem less intimidating to someone learning how to create.  More advanced doll makers will appreciate the skill of making specific faces rather than a generic face.  The book also gives basic information on body/head proportion and making armatures.

The second book I would like to recommend is Creating Lifelike Figures in Polymer Clay, Tools and Techniques for Sculpting Realistic Figures by Katherine Dewey.  This is a set of sculpture lessons in a book.  It gives a lot of detailed information on more subjects than I can write about here.  This book goes into the body proportion, shapes of skulls, setting eye focus, creating realistic musculature, armatures, and much more. It also has a significant section on how to create your own sculpting tools.  If you are really interested in working with polymer clay, it will give you a lot of ideas on how to make what you need rather than purchasing ready made tools.

Now, on to my work on the Belsnickel.  One of the reasons I started making this doll is because I had seen some instructional material online about how to make polymer clay eyes that looked like glass eyes.  I wanted to experiment with the technique because I think it will give a doll a more realistic look to the doll.  So now that I am working on the head, I started by making the eyes.  The eyes need to be baked before they are inserted into the head.  I know the size head I will be making because the head is about a seventh to 7.5 of the body.  I have to make eyes to fit the head.  The head will be two and a half inches (6.5 centimeters)  high.  The width will be 2/3 of the height.  And the average head is five eye widths across.  So after doing all the math, my doll's eyes will be 3/8 inch (0.9525 centimeters) across from one corner of the eye to the other.  And once I had that measurement, it was time to begin.

Once again, I want to emphasize that this is a technique I saw on the internet.  It is not something I developed.  Also, this technique is different from the techniques for making eyes that are found in the books referenced above.  I don't know how well this technique is going to work.  This is why I experiment.  I made several pairs of eyes so that I could choose the best eyes and also to test a few things regarding which way worked best for painting the eyes. 

It is important to condition the clay before making something with it.  Read more about conditioning clay online or in one of the books recommended above.  Then I rolled the clay into a log that was 3/8 inch thick.
(I'm sorry, but converting American fractions to centimeters is a bit of a distraction for me.)  Anyway, I rolled out a log and made sure that it was the width I needed to make the eye the right size by using a circle template.  I started by cutting off a piece of clay the diameter of the circle and rolled it into a ball.  That made too large of a ball.  I found that cutting a piece the radius of the circle made a ball much closer to the correct size.  At times I had to add or subtract a little clay, but that was a worthwhile starting point.  I kept working at it until I had a ball the correct size to fit the 3/8 inch hole of my circle template.  So eventually I ended up with a few sets of eyes that were in the ball park of the same size.

Once I had some balls made, I used a ball tool to make a round indentation in the center of the ball.  This tended to flatten the ball on the bottom.  This depression will end up being the Pupil of the eye.  At this point, the eyes need to be baked.  The information online suggested baking the pieces on a piece of glazed tile.  I did not have a small one handy, so I placed them on the saucer of a clay flower pot and baked the eyes according to the information on the package of polymer clay.  A general rule of thumb is to bake pieces at 275 degrees Fahrenheit (135C) for fifteen minutes for each quarter inch of thickness of the clay.  But read and follow the directions on the particular clay you use.  It will vary with different brands of clay.  In this case the eye balls baked without scorching.   

At this point, I want to add something about baking clay.  I have a small toaster oven that I use only for baking clay.  This is not called for by the manufacturers, but I have seen it recommended by people.  Some books do recommend that if you are using your regular oven that you should clean it before baking food in it.  I prefer to use a dedicated oven.  The limitations of using a small toaster oven is that the pieces have to be small so that they don't get too close to the heating elements.  The clay can scorch.  Also, I found that using the clay flower pot saucer seemed to keep the pieces from scorching better than placing them directly on the metal pan that came with the oven. 

So the eyes were baked, and after they cooled down they were ready for the next step.  I think I will pause here for today.  The blog post takes time to write and edit.  I have as much left to write as about making the eyes as I have written already.  This seems like a good stopping point.  I will finish up about making the eyes on my blog post on Sunday.