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.