Project Kelpie

My, how time flies when you're having fun!
It's almost 3 months since I graduated and happy to say I've had little time to myself.
Finding a spare minute between jobs, I figured I'd get some sculpting time and try a material I haven't had much experience with -
hello Super Sculpey!!


Super Sculpey is a polymer clay that can be sculpted and then baked to a really hard ceramic finish. It's often used to create maquettes or prototype models. You can sand it, drill into and paint once it's out the oven, making it super easy to use.


After doing a bit of research into what other sculptors think of it, I find out you can actually mix different sculpeys together to achieve whatever firmness you prefer sculpting with, for the time being I'll just stick with good ol' super sculpey




 I love the kelpie myth and after reading various stories from all round Scotland I discovered kelpies are not particulary friendly. In fact they like to appear to us as beautiful horses in an attempt to lure humans onto their back and drag them into water, thus drowning them and consequently eating them! The trick is to look as alluring as possible.

You can capture one however, if you manage to get a magical bridle onto it, so I came up with the idea to have one that had been captured and tethered.  Although unable to escape it would appear alert, looking for an opportunity to escape.
I did a few sketches and played about with some ideas on design. Although out of it's natural environment, a river/lake, I wanted it to look like it came from there - wet hair, incorporating some scales of a sea creature.



I took the idea of a pony shape and tweaked it's shape a little making it look a little alien. Referencing sea horses and sea creatures I made the head very elongated.

The armature I made was basically a few coils of wire with lots of tin foil to bulk out the shape. This saved using a lot of clay.

the only drawback of supersculpey is that it's very soft when working with it, often running the risk of mushing an area already sculpted whilst working on another area. A lot of people get round this by working on separate pieces and fixing them together at the end. Alternatively you can mix different types of sculpey together to create a new firmness, essentially creating a custom consistancy that suits the sculptor.
I found that whilst working on the sculpt helped me move forward with the design. I could play about with different ideas and change them if they didn't look good. I found this easier to sketching. I guess I feel more comfortable with a sculpting tool than a pencil and paper!

finally, when I had the design I wanted i popped it in the oven - 135degreesC for 10mins. It came out super hard with an amazing finish.

it's amazing what you can do with a bit of wire, tinfoil and some clay!

I still need to add the bridle and work on a base. Great thing about sculpey is you can bake it, then add more and bake it again. this allows you to retain all the work without fear of smooshing while you work on a new area. Am pretty pleased with the result - not bad for my first sculpey endeavour!!


On my travels through the internet for sculpting inspiration I came across this master sculpter that literally made my jaw drop!! Seriously check this guy out. I don't know whether to be inspired or intimidated!!
http://marknewman.deviantart.com/gallery/

omg the detail! hair is amazing and even the teeth!

love how he captures the emotion and makes it look like a captured moment in time.

enjoy browsing his gallery!