| Customizing "Grandpa" to make a Santa ornament | ||
| There are several doll-making molds available on the mass-market, any of which can make adorable and realistic-looking dolls. If you want to change the expression on the faces to something other than what's there or if you just want to make each one of your dolls or ornaments unique, "tweaking" the molded face can give you the one-of-a-kind look without having to start from a raw lump of clay. |
I started with this molded face from the "Grandpa" flexible mold by Polyform. I do a lot of tweaking to a molded face no matter which mold it is, though... even one of my own. I like the faces to be unique when they're done. To start, I want Santa to have a more youthful and "jolly" appearance, so I redistribute some of the clay so that the cheeks are higher and rounder. |
You can first pull the clay up with a flat clay shaper tool and then smooth with your fingers, or you can just do the whole process with your finger. If the face was much smaller than this, I'd use the clay shaper all the way through, because fingers don't easily fit into such a small area without leaving fingerprints. |
When I glue on the beard, the added volume will give Santa a huge chin, so I narrow and elongate the chin and jaw to compensate. |
Larger eyes and pupils are perceived as "friendlier" than small ones, so I want to enlarge the eye opening and define the lids a little more sharply, especially in the corners of the eye. This also makes it easier to paint the eyes, later. I reshape the nose with a lower bridge and a bulbous tip. |
I've accentuated the eyebrows and smoothed most areas of the face, especially the wrinkles around the eyes. Though Santa is not a young man, I like him to have a youthfulness about him. Inspect the head minutely, and then pop it into the oven at the manufacturer's recommended time and temperature. |
You can use a huge range of different colors for antiquing... I'm using a mix of burnt umber and red oxide acrylic paints, here, but any warm brown would be fine, depending on the look you want. Before the paint has a chance to dry, I'll wipe it off with an alcohol-dampened baby wipe or paper towel. |
From the puddle of antiquing, I take a little swipe of both those colors and then add quite a bit of white to it, mixing until I have a light peach... almost white or cream-colored. If you use pure white to paint the eyes, the effect is usually going to be too stark, unless Santa is very pale to begin with. |
Paint the whites of the eyes and the eyebrows with this very pale peach, just skimming the brush over the eyebrows so that the paint doesn't cover the antiquing. Apply tiny amounts of red/pink chalk or pastel to cheeks and nose with a cosmetic applicator or your fingertip. |
After the eyes are dry, mix up a very dark brown to paint the base coat for the iris. Paint a tiny dot in each eye. If you get them looking the same direction on the first try, congratulations! :) Otherwise, you'll compensate and adjust the placement of the dot as you gradually make each dot a little bigger. |
You can almost never see the entire circle of the iris... the relaxed eyelid will normally cover about 1/6 or 1/5 of the surface of the iris. When the dots are enlarged to the right size for the iris, they should both be looking in the same direction. Let the paint dry for a few minutes, then mix up three shades of the color that the iris will be. |
I'm using greens here... a deep green, a medium and one that's almost white. Use the darkest for the area of the iris that will be in the shadow of the eyelid, the medium for the rest of the iris area and the almost-white for highlights. Keep the pupils on the large side - small pupils can make a character look "mean." |
Mix some white into that red/brown antiquing mix, again... just a little bit darker than the skin tone... paint the lower lip. Add a bit more antiquing color to that lower lip color and paint the upper lip. This is the finished face, ready for some hair. |
Glue the hair backwards from the direction that you will want it to lie... from the top of the head draped over the face and from the bottom of the chin upwards, also draped over the face. When the glue is dried, you can arrange the hair, using tiny amounts of glue here and there to hold the style in place. |
This is the Santa head in his mohair beard and wig, before styling. The head can now be made into an ornament, package topper or even a doll. |
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