Pessimistic Paul

this sculpture is of an old man's head cut open like a cookie jar with a sad hidden creature inside. I used sculpey, clay, ink, glaze, epoxy, and acrylic paint as my materials. Starting with a big ball of clay I quickly shaved and molded it down to a head shape. I when on to add the eyes, ears, nose, etc. Shaping the head didn't take as long as one might think, it is what comes after that takes forever. Before I was able to let the head dry for firing, I had to hollow it out. While I was doing this I thought it would be cool to make a cage almost, using the top of the head cut off and the base. And if I made the cage I could put something more depressing inside to create a more "Reagan" themed message. After the head was done drying it was fired, lucky it didn't crack at all. I wasn't sure how I would paint it, but I decided on doing the inside a solid rich color, best achieved with acrylic paint. For the outside i used ink so there wouldn't be a glossy look and so that I could add more shading and detail. When painting the eyes I used acrylic paint to get a non-transparent color and then glazed them so they looked shiny/wet like eyes are in real life. When making the creature for inside the head I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew he should look sad and have a big nose. I ended up making him blue and in a down vest, sitting criss-cross looking up. At the very end, I decide the whole cage thing wasn't going to work, so instead I glued the "cap" per say half on. This way you only saw parts of the guy depending on where you stood. After prolonged process, I think it came out pretty good in the end.