Clay Faces - how I do mine.

I've had a bit of trouble lately with painting my little clay faces so decided I would blog about them as much to help me (as a memory aid) as for anyone else who may be interested.

My last few attempts have failed at the last step - when I sprayed a little finishing gloss on them everything smudged which is so disappointing. I have been using Sharpie pens for the detail and it seems the ink in those pens reacted adversely with the finishing gloss.

So having had a little play around this is a Step by step guide and seems to work fine:

1. Paint the whole face with skin coloured acrylic paint and let dry
2. Apply chalk blusher to forehead, cheeks and chin
3. Outline the eyes - using a watercolour pencil
4. Paint the whole of the inside of the eyes with white acrylic and let dry
5. With watercolour pencil, draw in the inner eye
6. Paint the eye colour in the whole of the inner eye section and let dry
7. Paint or pencil in the black part of the eye and let dry
8. Dot a spot of white paint for the light in the eyes and let dry
9. Pencil in the eyebrows
10. Spray a light spritz of the finishing gloss - only a very light spray else it'll smudge and be ruined.

The finishing gloss I use is called 'Porcelain Gloss' and is from Sandra Lee's 'Floral Kraft' range. It is really meant for dried or silk flowers but works fine on the clay (unless using Sharpie pens as mentioned above!)

I have in the past used Sakura Glaze pens for the features and they have been fine, although when I tried recently, they too smudged! I think I need to let them dry completely before spraying on the finishing gloss - and then make sure to spray only one light spritz.

The difference in using watercolour pencils and Sakura pens may be seen in the photos above (from the top, the first picture shows pencil finish and the second picture, the Sakura Pen finish). The pencils give a much finer finish than the pens - but I think both work equally as well. Once the heads have the hair applied, the details of the face don't show up so much anyway.

I'm off now, to make some more - they are something I never tire of!