Emily Nguyen
Emily Nguyen
This is my process for creating the birthday gifts for Bubbie.
My brother just turned 17! I wanted to make him something out of clay, as I had just recently gotten into clay again. I wanted to make him a hipper version of himself, as we were gettting into blind boxes such as Sonny Angels and Smiskis. I also made him a toothbrush holder, as I wanted to make him something functional. I designed as himself as Hatsune Miku, as he had a very iconic picture of him as a baby with a Hatsune Miku filter on.
I referenced off the image of him with the Hatsune Miku filter on. I made sure to make a key note of the shapes of the immage, such as the two iconic long ponytails of the filter, the roundness of my brother's cheeks, and the body of the piece. I first started making the really big head, with a deep enough hole to make the toothbrush fit in it and stay stable. I then added an indent for the face area, to represent the nose and mouth region. I rolled out two long pieces of clay, and attatched it to the side of the cup like figure, to represent the Hatsune Miku's filer hair.
I used sculpey oven-bake clay for the first time. I wasn't used to the consistency and texture of it at first, as the clay starts off really hard. Once you play with it for a long time, it starts to soften up and is easier to mold with.
After I baked it a few times in the oven, I coated the piece of 2 layers of white acrylic paint, before I added in the main colors of his skin, teal for the hair, and black for some accents. Once I was done with that, I used triple thick gloss to add a shiny glaze over the piece.