STORY TIME:

(you can skip it, I won't feel bad)

This month, spur of the moment, I built something for my extremely supportive and kind manager from work for Christmas. Literally four days before Christmas I was like... he deserves some serious appreciation for all the appreciation he has given me, and I can't express it in words because I'm socially inept, so... WOODWORK.

SHIT.

I couldn't learn woodwork in four days and make a decent product that he would want to keep. So, I sat in my car, thinking. I drove past a British food store (he's British) and thought, "Maybe I could just get him some special British candy". I stepped in, and realized... I didn't know his tastes, and 9/10 times he is on a diet. Bad idea.

Then it hit me... clay. I mean... all you do is squish some dirt, right? How hard could it be? Not as hard as wood, at least.

I speedwalked through the rain (even though I had my car?! I'm actually really stupid, because it was cold and wet and my umbrella was still in my car? Genius?) across four blocks of the town to buy clay at the emporium.

Didn't know shit about clay. Still don't.

Terracotta air-dry looked pleasant enough, and it wasn't as professional as pottery clay, so... I bought a medium-sized hunk of it and speedwalked through MORE rain BACK across four blocks to get to my car and turn on the heat and stare at my purchase in fear. Was I over-ambitious and impulsive again? Oh yes. Always. 

(Examples of my past impulsive craft flares: I have a broken German cuckoo clock I took on the challenge to restore order to, but have no mechanical knowledge (yet), I bought a lightbox to attempt traditional animation--drew three frames once. I have piles of colored paper I wanted to cut up to make cut-out style pictures, I bought a ton of embroidered patches to fix onto a jacket months ago and still haven't put half of them on... and so forth)

But, I got home with the clay I knew nothing about and started to work it while watching T.V with my family. They teased me a bit, as family does. They made their remarks of "do you know what you're doing?" and etc. PFFT.

I had a pretty decent shape by the end of the movie. I was building a soccer boot, as my manager is obsessed with two things; nutrition and SOCCER.  ("Football")

When morning came, I smoothed out imperfections and cracks with water and made a pretty smooth shoe surface, then spent another two hours perfecting it and adding decoration and detail. I stuck it in a box knowing that day was the ONE day before Christmas that HE HAD OFF WORK. That meant it was my only chance to drive to work and have the whole staff engrave their names on the side of it before the clay dried, without him seeing.

I got there, and the staff were like "he's coming in, soon! Hurry! Hide!", but I knew better. Because he was messaging me about the boss's present. I had drawn it and sent it to him a few days before and he was out getting it printed professionally and framed while I was sneaking around getting HIS gift sorted. ha HA.  Gottem. B)

This was the gift I drew for my boss, starring her dog *ELFIE*. I had to go over the printed drawing with paint and WHITE-OUT and fix the name, which I screwed up! Looked stylized. Signatures and messages went in the bottom space.

After the soccer boot (which I have no pictures of because it was a gift and very specialized, and lives only in his house now) was signed, I took it back home to perfect it and add the cleats and stick it in the sun to dry. This ended up taking me into another day. I left it on my porch in the sun for most of the weekend to dry it. Then, on Christmas, that baby was his. c:

It's really satisfying to make gifts for people. Both my boss and manager appreciated what they got, because neither of them had ever received anything like what I created. That's low-key magical.

~~~~~anyways~~~~~

I had clay left over, and was in the mood to use it. So, I did a sketch. I really wanted to do one of my characters, but making a human out of clay... daunting. Humans are ugly and shaped very specifically. Instead, I pulled out ole Dorian, my carpenter fox from Riven Isles:

This is a rough sketch of what I wanted to make:

Sculpting Dorian was trying because the pose I put him in was forward-heavy, and meant that he fell forward from his perch multiple times; broke, squished, and morphed as I was building him. I fixed this by sticking a stone in his bum. C:

I also added the mallet for good measure and made his stylized spiky neck poof stretch back more for balance.

I still dropped him a few times, and from start to finish, I replaced his ears twice, reattached his tail twice, and added a wire to hold his hammer in place. There are wires in his legs and arms for support as well, and a small one I added to his tail after the second time that I broke it.

Sculpting Dorian took at least 8 hours, over a few days.

Then came painting; 5 or 6 hours, on two hours of sleep.

This was the morning after a New Years Eve party, where I had been the only sober person, and the only female person, and the only person that disappeared multiple times for long stretches to pet cats and make sausages. I stayed awake until four, slept there for two hours, drove home, and decided "it's been almost a week since I built Dorry. I should paint him."

So, I did.

I have cheap paintbrushes leftover from Year 10 Art and whipped them out with some of my sister's paints, then got to work. I messed up a lot, and smudged paint in the wrong places, and missed a bit around the hammer, but, I called it a day.

Here is Dorry, as he sits on my shelf:

And, that's that! This month, I'm having a clay party because I enjoyed making this so much. I'm thinking about making a dinosaur next. Why?

I like dinosaurs. >:c

thanks for your time <3