Sculpting Skye again: head

Because making from scratch a toy figure of my first and favorite JW Velociraptor OC once wasn't enough, I made another one, this time depicting her as an adult. This post is about sculpting the figure's head, I have two other posts about sculpting her wings and body. I didn't first complete one part and then move onto the next, and all were in progress simultaneously, but this felt like a logical way of dividing up recounting this rather lengthy birbmaking process (which took from November 2022 to May 2023).

Skye is part of a figure set with her wife and two kids. You can find all the posts relevant to making all four of them in this tag.

I seem to like to start my raptorsculptings with the mouth, and this time was no exception. It's a big part of a raptor's face, so a lot about the rest is just kind of built around it.

More osplets

Screenshots from Sääksilive Osprey nests, featuring days-old hatchlings at the four active nests. There are more chicks again! Screenshots show fish prey.

E1 eating, new sibling E2 screaming, at nest #1.

Sculpting Cloudburst

The process of making one of my latest two small raptor figures, this one being a poseable art doll, with fabric body, and clay head, hands, and feet.

I actually considered that approach when Skye's second figure was at planning stage, before deciding otherwise. Skye's mom was my first customized existing figure, and Skye was my first figure sculpted from scratch, so I suppose it's fitting Skye's child is my first art doll. :)

I worked on Cloudburst for a little over two weeks from late October to mid November 2022, at the same time as I worked on Tempest, who took longer mostly because I took a break for a while from sculpting her to focus on this figure.

I started by putting together a wire armature. The spine is a long piece of two 0.3mm jewelry wires twisted together. One of the two is twice the length, looping at the tail tip, so it's really three wires. The limbs are 0.8mm steel wire, with the arm and leg on each side being the same piece. There's also a steel wire for the other weight-bearing toe of each foot.

Sculpting Tempest

A post compilation of the process of making a tiny raptor figure child for my two previously-tiny raptor figures. I'll post photos of the finished figure set soon to my site and deviantart (ETA: now posted to site, DA, and also tumblr).

Tempest is sculpted with polymer clay, which can be baked in a home oven, and comes in various colours (and can be mixed into more colours). I worked on her for about a month, from October to November 2022.

As with her mother's second figure, I started with the mouth. I originally thought of making this figure even tinier than it ended up being, but when I decided to have her mouth be open, well, this is probably the tiniest I'm currently able to make these pieces.

Gold leaf

Oscillating osplets

Three of the Osprey nests at Sääksilive each have a hatchling! The little ones are still very wobbly and just sway to and fro trying to keep their disproportionate head up, but there have been some bites of fish successfully caught in little beaks. But also lots of falling over and wiggling. No hatches yet at nest #4, but here are screenshots from nests #1, #3, and #5/LS. Include views of fish prey.

Portraits and peeks

Screenshots from the Cornell Redtail nestcam. Some show prey.

Chicks sitting around by themselves in the evening. M2, M1, M3 left to right.

Family portrait. M2 & M3 front, M1 in the back row with mom.