Thursday, 10 April 2014

Derpy, Ditsy Doo, Dr Whooves assistant




I guess the title doesn't make a lot of sense if you're not a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan. But you don't have to be for this post, I promise. It's just that I got my first introduction to needle felting on a MLP:FIM site and was determined to at least try to make a pony.












And what pony better to try than the wall-eyed, clumsy, but absolutely adorable Derpy.


I loved how she turned out and how much I learned on this little model, first one with "seperate parts" (ie wings), a wire armature inside (ok, a non-pipecleaner wire armature) and non-felted or at least very softly felted "hair"










I wish I had progression photos of how I made here, but if you're interrested at all have a look at the wonderful tutorial on Deviant Art by the-pink-dragon for how to make/use armatures (for a pony) with needle felting.

The hair I sortof made up as I went along, including my first hand blend - as you can see her mane is not entirely evenly coloured. Now I have proper blending brushes (will do a later post on this), but I honestly think I'll need to get into dyes as well at some point.

Friday, 4 April 2014

Baby dragon

I'm a huge fan of dragons, all sorts of dragons (but western fantasy, not easter worm-like), little ones, big ones, flying ones, sitting ones.. ok you get the picture. I'm also quite fond of making dragons and here is a little one I made for my sister


 This one is about 15cm high and made from the most amazing sculpting clay I have used. Its called super sculpey and is a fleshy colour to start with. You can bake it in a normal oven at 130 C (yay no need for a kiln!) and is soooo responsive.

From the front on this photo she looks a little evil, but I just couldn't get a good angle to get her from the front
I've started with some tinfoil as an armature/base because this kind of polymer clay apparently shouldn't be too thickly applied. The scales was created by taking a bit of netting fabric and rubbing it into the clay and then pulling it out to leave a nice patter behind.
 I painted her with purple and pearlesent white and aded some black to the details. I also used some ink to bring out the scales - a technique I learned when painting miniatures which, sadly I haven't done in a while, but I only have so much time. And besides I'm easily distracted by new projects