Sunday, October 27, 2013

Happy Kitty, harder than it looks

 For this little bead, 1 18" tall, the idea was for this kitty bead to have that funny look when a kitten puts both paws out in play or when 'attacking'.

As the title suggests, things are often much harder than they look.

The face went fairly well. The happy eyes expression a bit tricky and the open mouth and tiny chin took a long time to be 'just right.

Adding the texture to a sculpture sometimes would distort the details and it would be "start all over again". Accustomed to these little struggles when sculpting small items, perseverance paid off, and when it made me smile to look at it, it was finished. 

The paws with outspread toes were an entirely different story. In addition to being very time consuming and exacting they had to match.

Finally, two little paws emerged from the raw clay, same size, same level but too short. Cut away the paws from the chin, add a bit of clay to the bottom, raising them to the proper lever, smooth the joins, texture the new clay and quit for the day.

But, something was still bugging me about the design. 

Funny thing about seeing something with fresh eyes.... you can see immediately what was bugging you earlier.

The perfectly finished paws were WAY to big for the happy, little face.

Sigh...

After some more work one little paw was finally scaled better for the face. Tomorrow I'll start on the second paw, reducing the size of all the pads and surrounding 'fur'.

The beads are very thick at this time. They are sculpted thicker than needed so that they can be sized if needed by sanding the backs of the beads down. This allows for any textures and details to remain constant throughout the design and the finished beads can all tweaked so they are all the same thickness.

Below is the first photo of the kitty with big paws.


By Penni Jo Couch
Designer/sculptor of 

1 comment:

Bonnie Kreger at B-LEE KREATIONS said...

Penni Jo, I'm smiling again this morning looking at the kitty with the big paws. One of my kittens that I brought home from the shelter had really big front feet and when my grandma saw her she said "I hope she grows into those feet or we will have to buy her shoes". I love your work on the kittens and I can't wait to adopt them.