A first attempt at Paper Clay

5 x 7 canvas on board...unfinished

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So this is a real multi media piece and my first try at Paper Clay using Rogene Mana's wonderful book Art of Paper Clay: Techniques for adding dimension to your Art.

There are multiple varieties suggested so this is just a beginning.
There are quite a few steps to getting the clay to the finishing point.  In this piece I chose a piece of hand-painted paper (gelli print paper) as a back ground which is adhered to a canvas board with mat medium.  (Acrylic paint). 

The gulls were rolled out of the clay which comes pre-packaged and is easy to work with.  (and not expensive.)  The feathers, etc, were pressed into the clay with various items around the studio or house...like paper clips, tongue depressors, and etc.  Then left to dry. And because this was not pre-attached to the background and will be glued on later, I had to turn the piece over for quite awhile to get it to dry thoroughly.  I think they can be baked in a 200 oven too.  

Rogene likes a kind of "distressed" look to her clay so I went along with that...putting a coat of white gesso on (dry) and two coats of gloss medium on next (dry between coats).  Then painting over the birds with a watered down black acrylic (let dry) and then removing it again with alcohol.  Let dry.  Then adding color. 

And the "stems" that I decided to add at the end will have some of those steps still to go through.  That is the way the clay looks before all the steps begin.  I think I will use some of yellow green and blue already in the background for the stems.

At the end I will glue them on the background board with Elmer's white glue.  (In some projects they are attached to the board earlier in the project.)  Then several coats of medium/varnish is brushed on at the very end to seal everything.  Title: "At the Shore".

This is my give-away piece for the Fine Arts Show in January.
Only 5 x 7.  But a good practice piece.