#oakish-clay

It's about 25cm/9.5in tall, a little smaller than most of my other sculptures. All in earthenware clay except for some epoxy putty for the wrappings, drone, and other details. Painted (hastily) with acrylics.

I sculpted this one in June over the course of about two or three weeks, which is Really fast for me, and so it was scrappy from the start- only so much you can bring yourself to scrape and sand and generally refine a sculpture before you get tired of it. I've made my peace with this one, though. It was fun to make the little ID drone if nothing else.

(Wire? What are you talking about? There is no wire.)

I had some fun with the freehand work on this one. The pattern around the shirt is from one of the artist's other works, and the writing on the back spells out "Eight Marbles Cast in Stone" (which is this character's given Ancient-style name) in Yongasabi, a slugcat conlang developed by @opashoo.

That's pretty much it for this one. Must say it is nice to get something done pretty quickly even if it's not up to my standards. But as I was telling a friend while working on this, my perfectionism is just a bit too tired out from caring too much about other things, so that's that. We'll see what else I come up with to make over my break.

This is is directly inspired by the original references (here), with a few adjustments by me here and there, though nothing much. It's something of a companion piece to the sculpture I made of White Lightning, Billowing Clouds of Ash (or COA for short), which you can see here if you want. I'm pretty proud of that one. (Go look at it.)

This mask was fun to make, as it's so organic-looking. I felt it was a nice contrast in its bright metallics to the flowing white feather-hair, and it was just as nice to realize and color in 3d as I imagined it would be. The feather hair itself took a long time to sculpt and was a bit tedious, but I would do it again. I cut some corners due to time constraints here but I still think it looks okay for being rushed.

Torso closeups:

We were talking about tools the Ancients in this world might use and how this particular one might work with resonant frequencies as a way of interfacing with various sorts of tech, which meant flutes or some sort, so I thought- why not panpipes? Mainly because they look cool, yes. They're a little small, but I like the addition.

Can't play any sort of flute with a mask on, though, so:

A couple more of the mask itself, which blessedly didn't have to be made in parts:

And what he looks like mask-less:

I'm pretty proud of this one. It's messy and rushed, but still looks good, and I definitely improved on various fronts while working on it. Nothing like painstakingly painting over the work of previous You to make present You excruciatingly aware of every little detail you sculpted wrong, of course. Jokes aside, great learning experience, highly recommend doing it if you're up to spending many tens of hours on the same project.

This is very much a work-in-progress. After she's been fired, I plan to start adding details- she still needs her necklace chain, various piercings, a mask (which will be detachable), designs on the collar-thing, et cetera, so that will all be added on later to make her more Ancient-y. For now, though, here's the base (edit: finished sculpture here!):

More photos and thoughts on the design/creation process under the cut.