Figurehead

It's about time I get to this end of the raptor figure I'm making.

I started by making the parts that go inside the mouth. I'll paint the figure once it's sculpted, but I want to make these pieces out of clay that's already the right colour, so I don't have to try to fit a brush in there for anything precise.

First, making tiny teeth.

After baking these little clay snakes, I cut the middle parts off so I was left with the tapered tips. The shapes are a bit curved in attempt to make the teeth shaped more like a raptor's, though at this size it was pretty difficult.

Both the teeth and the parts they attach to are mixed from light grey (which is what I'm using for most of the figure), red, and yellow clay to get the shades I wanted. Now for the fun part, where I lost at least three teeth (the figure's, not my own) somewhere on the floor, tore the red pieces a few times and had to patch them together before I could continue, and occasionally also successfully attached the teeth using tweezers, liquid clay, and swearwords.

Here's the palate, ready to bake ↑. The little mark in pencil is for where to have the teeth end, since I wasn't sure how many exactly would fit and couldn't go by number. I attached the teeth with the piece already on the baking paper I baked it on, so I didn't have to move it afterwards until it's cured. The clay's not fragile exactly when raw, but there was so much liquid clay in this vs. regular clay.

I also did all of this to both pieces twice, because I wasn't happy with my first results. Made sure to measure and plan the second versions a bit better, and I guess the first attempt was good practice, too. :D

Tools used so far:

• craft cutter and cutting mat (not pictured)
• tweezers (two kinds since I had two kinds, it varied a bit which ones felt the most useful at which stage)
• toothpicks for applying liquid clay
• silicon brush and sewing pin for various shaping and smoothing. The pin was also good for picking up and putting in place tiny flecks of clay where I needed to put a bit more gums around the teeth
• paper towel, because every tool got liquid clay on it all the time and needed wiping

After the pieces were baked and couldn't fall apart at the slightest touch anymore, I compared them again to the "life-size" reference I've drawn (side and top-down view) for getting the measurements right, and trimmed them a bit more precisely to the right size and shape. Cured polymer clay is apparently pretty strong (assuming it's baked correctly, and I hope mine is - should be), but it's flexible plastic, so the craft cutter didn't have too much trouble with how thin these pieces are.

Then I attached these to more clay and some foil filling (and more liquid clay as glue between cured and raw clay) to make the upper and lower jaws. Tools are the same, just no tweezers.

Then baking again! I don't think the oven at my apartment has ever seen this much use during the time I've lived here.

I mixed some more clay colours at this point, red+black to the back of the mouth, and some lighter pinks with a different ratio of red+yellow+light gray.

Also the snout was a bit too bulky, so I shaved off some already baked clay and foil from the top of the snout with a sturdy box cutter. Will cover that up later with a thinner layer of clay. Also will replace that darning needle with a wire eventually, it's just handy to hold onto while working on this (I removed the needle for bakings, though).

I baked the piece yet again, and then added more clay:

Upper lip, mouth corners,

...and also nostrils with the tip of a darning needle. Then baked.

I think it's at the stage where I should decide how to go about making the eyes before I do much else. But starting to somewhat resemble a dinosaur.