There's a new man in my life...

Yeah, I thought that might get your attention! Meet Fred, he's my new man...


Fred very kindly allowed me to wrap his head in clay at 4 O'clock this morning. It had to be 4am, because, y'know, that's when inspiration strikes isn't it?

I've been wanting to make clay head sculptures for the longest time. In fact, I made one at school about... umm... 20 something years ago. Unfortunately that was before the days of camera phones so I have no photo's of that.

Keith Phillips from Mudstuffing Sketchbook has been working on the same thing, with stunning results. His inspiration came from the DVD series of Philippe Faraut. There are some little clips of the DVD's on the web page, and from what I saw, the instruction looks excellent. Unfortunately, those little clips were all I had to go on since I can't afford the DVD's at the moment and I'm not even sure if they are available in the UK.

I put off making a start for a few hours because I didn't really have the right tools - I don't have a dowel to put the head on, and what's that interesting tool they use for the eyes? Plus I wasn't sure if I had enough clay, but that restless feeling got too intense and I just had to make a start.


Here Fred's head looks like some sort of strange patchwork football head! I've re-watched the little clip on the website and I see now that it was all going wrong right from the start! His head should have been more like a light bulb!

I should have taken more photo's as I progressed with the piece, but to be honest I wasn't confident that I was follwing Faraut's instructions right. I didn't seem to be able to get the head shape right. I added the "cap" of clay at the back, which I think was too small for the size of the head, and I kept pressing down on the top of the head to steady it while I worked, which has obviously flattened the top of the head. The result is this strange looking being...



I have faith that I can pull it back though and make something semi-reasonable. The good news is that the person I am making is a strange looking creature anyway! Now there's a clue!

At this point I'm not worrying about the shoulders at all. They're there really just to support the rest of the piece, and will be corrected later. The eyes look too high, but that is probably just because the head is so flat on the top! The nose isn't very big, but this person has a tiny nose! Lot's of clues there!

Oh, what the heck, why not have another giveaway? A tile of your choice for the first person to guess who it is! (And no, it's not Fred! That's just a working title!)

PS. Linda, I'm sorry you haven't received your tiles yet, I just haven't got round to going to the post office! They'll be on there way very soon!