Painting Skye

Photos from the process of painting the figure I made of my little raptor. The finished figure can be seen here at my site, here at deviantart, and here at tumblr.

It's a big step, getting painted, but mom's here for reassurances. And colour reference.

Who's ready for paint?

This girl is!

Raptor pants

Adding more feathers to Skyefigure's legs where the plumage stops at her ankles, to give it a bit of a fringe.

It's mostly the same technique of adding individual feathers I've used elsewhere on the figure, just not flattening them as much, to get it to look fluffy, but made of big feathers instead of wispy, more downy ones. I started at the ankle on the first work session, and finished one leg on the next.

Various sculpting tweaks

Small additions and details to the Skyefigure.

Two more strands of fluff to the beard for starters.

Footnotes

Sculpting something for the Skyefigure to stand with.

The claws I already had. Back when I was making Whirlwind, I mixed way too much putty and figured I might as well use it on something since it'll harden regardless. I made a bunch of little raptor claws, in case I'd need them for something. I think at that point I was already planning on making Skye from scratch, though I hadn't quite decided yet exactly how, so they were always meant for her. I picked the ones that looked like they'll work best for the size of the figure. Also, another little reference image, for getting the length of the toes right.

Victoria and one of my fluffy Velociraptor figures (who might as well have a name, too - she's called Kanervikko now) were also present as reference and moral support.

Making those less famous raptor claws

Finger claws, that is.

De-mulleting

More work on the Skyefigure. Bringing out the epoxy putty now.

Starting to look like a raptor

Bulking up the neck and the back of the head to the approximate shape they have under the feathers, and other additions.

Finally in one piece

Skyefigure has a head on her shoulders now! Here's how that happened.

I inserted a 1mm aluminum wire in the hole I'd made on the underside of the head, cut off some clay around the wire sticking out of the torso to have more room for the twisting, twisted the head's wire around the torso's 2mm one, and wrapped a bit of foil around it all.

Then covered the aluminum mess with clay, and smoothed it into both ends of the neck, and posed the head a bit before baking.

At this point the neck is just a column to connect the head to the body, more clay around it to be added later, for the proper shape of the neck and details. Since the wire wasn't baked into the head originally, this seam would not be very secure without baking it at this point, before doing anything more to it.

Arming the raptor

 So, wings.

The bigger step that's eyes

 I used the end of a plastic straw (not the one I've cut into a feather stamp) as a cookie cutter to make a slit pupil out of black clay, and mixed red and yellow clay into an orange to accompany the yellow on the iris. Then I did my best to follow this cat eye toturial, so I made the colours into thin sheets to wrap around the pupil.

Inbetween bigger steps

More fluff to Skyefigure's tail, and widening the ribcage a bit. Some of the longer feathers added to the tail are again from the batch I made separately, attached with liquid clay. Wings are still unattached and the head still under construction.

Currently construction is adding brow archs and a bit more fluff to the face, too (with pretty much every previously mentioned tool I've used for drawing on clay), while leaving room for the eyes and just leaving the back of the head for later. Also adding a little bit of vaguely scale-like texture to the snout with... surface of a lemon juice bottle designed to look like a lemon.

Raptor arms

Two pieces of 1mm aluminum wire bent at a few places.
Somehow I'll... make some wings... out of youuu!

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.

Pin the tail on the raptor

I made an armature for the Skyefigure's tailfan out of masking tape, and added some aluminum foil for filler to the tail.

I rolled clay into flat, thin sheets again with a round glass jar, and covered the tail with them. Then I cut out excess clay, flattened the clay a bit more towards the edges, then cut it into shape again, back and forth for quite a while, and did my best to blend the seams together. I shaped the big flight feathers using the silicon brush tool a bit, but mostly a sewing pin (it's starting to become my favorite sculpting tool).

Plumage for the clay birb

Putting some clay on the Skyefigure's armature. Also added a wire for attaching the arms later.

Just going and making a new dinosaur

As the JW raptor pack residing in my bookcase (or raptor case, they got a new one all to themselves) has been getting up to date with the comics I draw of them, one member of the family is still stuck at being represented by the small and featherless figure the character has since outgrown.

Skye was originally inspired by my Blue mini figure, and the whole AU she's part of was largely inspired by how well that mini figure fits on the Indoraptor figure's head. I've had trouble finding a figure to customize into her older self, though, so I thought I'd try my hand at just making one from scratch.

I'm using bakeable polymer clay for most of the figure, and probably adding things with epoxy putty when I'm done with the baking. I barely know what I'm doing, but let's see what comes out of that anyway.