Monster Camp--Day 1

It was hard to sleep the night before Monster Camp! But I somehow managed it. I had no idea who all was going to be my class mates, but I ended up seeing a couple suspicious looking guys in the dining area. And sure enough, they ended up being at the camp as well.

Allen picked us up in his Dark Hour van and a few of us clamored in, introduced ourselves and away we went!

The first day is orientating us with the shop as we pick our spot and Allen goes over a few things, explaining what is on the table before us and different things around the shop. After that, we get right to it! Aprons on and we take out our pics we brought with us for a guide.

We were to bring 10 pictures with us at the very least of an idea of what we wanted to sculpt. Allen came around to talk to each of us as he instructed us how to put the clay on the head form before us.

I've never sculpted before, so this was a first for me but there was no time to dawdle, we had sculpting to do! All day! Friday is sculpt day and our first task was to get clay on the head form and sculpt out the basic shapes. Raking it out and then smoothing it and add more clay, take some off, slice here, slice there, tweak here, tweak there.

Now and then, Allen would come over to see how you are doing and give us a few tips. He noticed my ears I was sculpting were a bit too forward and explained how ears are slightly tilted back. Also my face I had sculpted was a bit off. So he told me he was about to scare me and took the wire tool and made it taut and then sliced the face off! OH NOOOO!! Hahaha! I was thinking oh crap, I am gonna have to do it over but no, he just lifted it up carefully and placed it where it needed to be. :)

I was like wow! What a cool trick! That just kinda blew my mind!


For the nose, I wanted to give her an owl beak so I could bring in aspects of this area of Maine with the owls we have here.

And then, I got the idea to instead of having a scar on her brow, I would have a brand. So instead of it being indented, it would be raised. I had found a magic symbol that means divine justice and I sculpted that right onto her brow. I stood back and looked at it (another tip from Allen) and I realized it was up too high on her head and I really wanted it down. So when Rob came by and I expressed that to him, he was like, well move it then! :) So I did! Ha!

So when it came to the ears, I did the same thing. I lopped them off only to move them. Then I could see the ears were too thin and tried to add more clay to one part and they were off then and not matching and it was starting to become frustrating. So I just took them off completely and started again. This time, I took equal amounts of clay in each hand and applied them to either side of the head (another trick from Allen) and began to sculpt them with my fingers. It worked out much better and I really liked her ears after that.

While we sculpted, Shannon arrived with lunch and said hello to us. It was finger food to go and grab and eat when we were hungry and then right back to sculpting. No time to sit down for a long break, we had to get this knocked out at least for the most part so that Saturday we could do detailing that we might like and then be ready to mold before lunch.

(To be continued!)