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.