Making Faces & Figures

A weeklong exploration of polymer clay and more in Jackson Mississippi
 Tougaloo College Summer Art Colony July 12-18  2008

Masks, Spirit Dolls, Totems, & Icons

Express yourself with a fanciful fabric and polymer clay doll.  Explore the uses of wire armatures and wrapped forms or use a pre-made cotton doll blank or the provided pattern and fabric of your choice and create a beautiful one of a kind figure.

Included in this week of figure and form are techniques of fabric painting and decorative ways with fibers, trims, laces, sequins, wire, beads, feathers, and more.

In addition to creating wire, paper and cloth forms, we will also cover a wide array of polymer clay techniques in this weeklong series. Faces can be used as parts of sculpture, jewelry, or framed wall art. The options are up to you---try them all!

Covered topics are basics of preparation, color blending, millefiore or "cane work" in floral and geometric forms, sculpting and mold making, stamping, additional surface decoration and inclusions, mica shift, and creating textures and faux effects (mimicking bone, wood, coral, etc) storage and baking, and finishing options

Making Faces—Modeling and Mold Making

This session begins with creating paper mache forms that can be embellished individually, or used as a draping mold over which to make multiple masks using polymer clay. Each student will have an opportunity to make several basic forms. Then we will cover the fundamentals of proportion, scale, and anatomical placement while making faces! We will build miniature faces using scrap clay and simple tools.

After baking we will create molds. Pulls from the mold will be manipulated and decorated in many ways. We'll use  many decorative techniques including  “plastic surgery” to create strikingly different faces from a single original mold.

Using swirl and feathering techniques, filigree, foils, metallic leaf, glitters, paints, stains and inks, and more we will embellish faces both fanciful and realistic.

The details in a face say so much about the character—whether creating a doll, a pendant for jewelry purposes, an icon or a totem or a decorative object for use in frames, mirrors, and other furnishings. Create your own unique faces that can be used to make all these and more, and know that NOBODY will have one just like yours!

Supplies each student will need:

·         Pasta Machine (can be shared)

·         Blade or very sharp knife

·         X-acto or craft knife

·         Interesting old buttons or small texture items

·         Small amounts of beads, fibers, ribbons, feathers if desired

·         Scissors, needle and thread

·         Pliers/wire cutters

·         2 White ceramic tiles 6”x6” (for work surface and baking)

·         Small soft paintbrush for applying finishes

Fabric, a doll body, wire, molding materials, inks, embossing powders, metallic leaf and foils, mica powders, glitters, molds and rubber stamps will be provided for student use; students may also bring their own decorative items and tools.

Clays—Use Kato, FIMO or Premo polymer clays for best strength and ease of use. Sculpey and SculpeyIII are not recommended for this class. 

Students will need AT LEAST two small two-ounce blocks of several different colors. Larger bricks of 1 pound each are available. 

A minimum of  8 ounces each of black and white is preferred. More is better—clay will also be available in class. Highly recommended colors include:

 ·         Black

·         White

·         Gold/Silver/Copper

·         Red, Yellow, Blue and Green

·         Ecru

·         Other colors as desired

 

 

 

 

Wholesale clay supplier: 
Prairie Craft Co. 
PO Box 209    Florissant CO 80816

800-779-0615    
vernon@pcisys.com
http://www.prairiecraft.com