First Friday - New Work - October 6th

First Friday - New Work

Hi all!

Welcome to the first post under my new blog format. First Fridays are reserved for giving you all a peek at some new work. This might be work in progress, truly new creations and/or a series of in progress pics of one or more pieces to give you all a little insight into the way things take shape around here on a daily basis.

It can take a week or two to complete a piece from it's beginning. Mostly this is due to working in batches thru the various processes and, with two completely different shoppes to stock, create for and manage, that can often stretch the time it takes for completing a piece even further. At any one time I can have between 2 and 3 dozen pieces going in some form. Yep, that's why my  actual "work area" can be as small as 4 or 5 inches square!

This week's post will give you all a little inside look at how I create some of the statues in Shadow of the Sphinx. I began this piece, a 9" tall standing statue of Nephthys, the Goddess of Mourning, about 10 days ago.  I get a few requests a year for Her in one form or another, the most popular being Her kneeling pose. Looking back, I am amazed at how this shoppe has become a bigger and bigger part of my creative world. The requests I get are so varied and not limited to Egyptian/Kemetic antiquity. I've done Mayan, Inuit, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic pieces too when requested and  always think how wonderful it would be to expand that in the shoppe itself but I can barely keep up as is most months without setting off down yet another road!

The most satisfying part of this work is that, for me, the ancient Egyptian pantheon has been a part of my life since I was 6 or 7. I've written before about how I painted hieroglyphs all over my bedroom closet walls at 12 hrs old, much to the chagrin of my mother when she found them, and how I used to make statues, crowns and amulets out of tin foil and my grandmothers endless craft supplies.  And I believe I have mentioned how I used to draw a few of the ancient deities, Anubis, Bast, Djehuty, Auset on the tops of my feet in pen or marker to protect me from nightmares and school bullies.

So it should be little surprise that when I came into working with polymer clay, the first thing I actually thought to try and make was a small Egyptian statue. And it was sooooooo bad. Those foil ones that I made when I was a kid were more realized (foil is a very underrated material! ) But something made me stick with it and keep trying. :)

Over the 7 or so years I have been doing this work, I've figured out a lot about how to make statues, faces, and all the little details that are involved. There are no tutorials, no instructions from the masters of old. . . just lots of antiquities and images to look at. I added in the making of amulets and, eventually, all sorts of non-traditional polymer pieces. I did have a little experience working in clay, but quickly found that it's nothing at all like working with polymer.

Of course, I am always going to be a rather undisciplined maker-of-things, which when it comes to statues means I cannot guarantee the height of a piece at the beginning. I use my eyes to tell me if the proportions are correct and I do not worry about perfect symmetry or balance (except in the faces).

Now, here are some images and short descriptions of the process along the way from start to finish on making the Nephthys statue I completed this week:

Every statue starts as lumps of raw clay. Basic proportions are made for the body, head and base or plinth the statue will eventually stand on. I'm not exact here since so much will be added and cut away but, over the years, I've become pretty adept at starting with the right amounts. Basic body shaping helps to get that where I want it. 

Quick form of the body allows me to gauge the finished height a bit better. Once I have that form, I'll make the head to size and then put feet right on the base, this is to allow me to preserve the tiny details like toenails etc because the body will still be handled quite a bit. Arms are added to the body and ears to the head and posture starts to take shape. After an overnight rest so the clay firms up again, I sculpt a little tighter to the the finished form and add the neck plate/aegis, sculpt the hands to the body and insert the tiny Ankh charm in the right hand. At this point, the statue is fired in the oven for the first time. 

Once the statue is fired, I'll add the headdress and start some of the clothing details.  The tall headpiece is a rendering of Nephthys hieroglyph, thought to be a house/building/column with a basket balanced on top. When the statue is fired a second time, painting begins. First a layer of acrylic matte as seen in the second image and then, when dry, the first layer of the metallic pigment, bronze in this case. 

A second layer is added after another overnight drying. Then the final coat of pigment and the reactive patina are applied. In the middle image you can see how quickly the changes begin to appear. I began at the top, working down the statue and you can see the greener coloring coming through on the headdress even though it was only done a few minutes prior to the rest of the statue. The final image shows the patina about two hours in. It's pretty close to done but I'll give it the rest of the day to sit and develop. Then a final sponging of the metallic pigment back overtop creates 
the final look of the piece. 

And there She is!!! Nephthys in her final form. Over time, the pigment will fade in luster and look truly aged. The headdress is removable for shipping, easily inserted into the head on a guide wire.  

So that's a peek into the making of one of my statues. In future first Friday posts, I'll focus in on smaller parts of the process like making heads, clothing etc. I never make two the same, always trying to give each customer a slightly unique look to their statue. In this case, I combined aspects of two traditional renderings of Nephthys from antiquity to create this one. 

And here are a few more pieces of New Work as well!

Hope you enjoyed this peek into the making of some of my things! Thank you for reading and for inspiring me as well! 

nicolas

New Fairy Houses with Patina rooftops!

Reliquary gargoyles. . . finished a few weeks ago but they still need their story! :)

New Clara Voyant mini tombstone for Halloween!

A new blue reactive patina to simulate the look of ancient faience work! Totally maddening and hard to control but soooo worth it as this little Taweret/Hippo shows. . . She is is just under 3" tall!

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Nephthys is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in Egyptian mythology.

Nephthys was known as the goddess of mourning. She was the goddess of night, rivers, sleep, and nature as well. When Nephthys became the goddess of mourning she also became a guide and protector of the dead. When people died their ''Ba'' would be tested by 40 gods, many of whom met up with Nephthys.

Nephthys had many siblings. Her parents were Geb the god of the earth (a goose) and Nut the goddess of the sky ( a female form arched over the land with stars over her body) . She was the sister of Auset/Isis, Osiris and a twin of Sutekh. 



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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)