Monday, September 26, 2011

"Tine" style fairy

Tine Kamerbeek's ballerina


While at NIADA I saw sculpts done by some very talented artists, including Tine Kamerbeek.  I had not seen her work before, but am now a fan.  I love her elongated faces.  I especially like her miniatures.... tiny, chubby, children. She often does ballerinas like the one pictured.
I decided I like to try a similar sculpt, I wanted to practice sculpting the exaggerated features on a fairy.  I'm going to try a miniature 3 1/2" fairy.  The face will have long tear drop eyes, chubby cheeks, and elf ears....a compact little body with over sized feet.

 I made an armature of 16 gauge copper wire and wrapped it with 22 gauge copper wire.  To give the piece some weight I added lead fishing weights to the shoes.  I bought an assortment at Walmart.  I used a cone shaped weight for the ankle area and a rounded ball piece for the toe.  The lead is very soft and can be shaped with a pliers. The cone shaped weights have a hole through the center and the wire armature fits into the top.  I then wrapped the wire with white floral tape.  I sealed the lead with Kilz spray paint.
I used a mix of La Doll and Premier air dry clay to make this fairy. This is a tiny sculpt so I used small paint brushes to refine the features, take a look.  Now she'll need an outfit!

4 comments:

Trudie Averett said...

She is absolutely adorable! Love, love her.

Susan said...

Thanks Trudie, now I'm trying to decide what she should wear.

Colleen Colquhoun Athens said...

SUSAN!!!!! YOU ARTIST QUEEN!!!! SHE is PRECIOUS!!!!! She makes me HAPPYYYYY!!!!! Love colleen

Flora said...

Soooooo sweet!!!!
Blessings,Flora