I've been wanting to play with creating my illustrated characters in 3D for a while, yesterday I decided to just go ahead and do it. I bought myself an Arteza polymer clay set and cutting mat, they arrived this morning and I couldn't wait to have a go!
I decided to try sculpting an illustration I'd drawn of a child writing 'HELLO' on the wall with a red crayon.
I love the colours in this illustration and although it was my first time experimenting with polymer clay, I found the colour mixing to be really easy and produced some brilliant colours.
I started with the head, then body, arms and little hands, then added the legs and wellies.
After that I created the hat and scarf with their rainbow trim, both involved a bit of shuffling around and a few attempts before I was happy with how they sat. I wanted to make sure they looked soft enough to be fabric and draped in a natural way.
After adding the little red cray, he was ready to bake! This was so scary, he took me 3 hours to make (after much muddling through the texture, how it stuck together and figuring out colour mixing). I baked him for 20mins in total, crouching down peering into the oven like it was the Bake Off finale until finally...
He was done! I am so pleased with him and can't wait to create a few more of my illustrated characters. It's so good to see an illustration come to life this way.