Now I start to go in and be a bit more pickey with the shapes and volumes. Here I'm pinching the bridge of the nose to create a more interesting contour.
In this view you can see how the neck twists off to the right behind the head. In the final sculpture I want the camel to be looking back towards a barrel that is hanging on his side. The overall idea for this sculpture is from the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. The leader of the thieves is checking on the other thieves who are hiding in the oil barrels on the camels.
I've added more volume to the sides of the top lip and put on the cheek on the right side of the head.
Here I've added the cheek onto the left side of the head and the chin under the top lip.
Now that I have the bulk of the overall volume of the head completed I can go over the whole thing and begin to smooth out the surface. I do this by just dragging my finger or thumb over the surface lightly. This helps to get rid of any bumps and lumps that shouldn't be there and also gets rid of most of the finger prints.
I put a bit more of a lump on the top of the head to match the original drawing more closely.
Next, I used the tip of a kitchen knife to shape the eyes and rolled a small ball of clay then flattened it out and cut it in half to form the eye lids.
Rolling another piece of clay into a small wiener shape to form the brow over the eye
I did the same thing for the other brow then smoothed it into the forhead with the edge of my thumb.
I used a small pointed tool to make the holes for the nostrils, creating a slight ridge at the tops.
To make the hair under his neck, I flattened out a thin piece of clay and attached it. Using the needle nose pliers, I lightly grabbed and pulled down to fray it, then using one of the tools with a serrated edge, I combed the clay down and it created a really neat rough hair look (one of those happy mistakes).
I then added the four tufts of hair to the top of the head and finally made the two ears and attached them.
I went over the whole thing one final time to smooth out any irregularities and finger prints.
Click on the "Next Page" to see the finished sculpture of the camel with the body and final painting.
This took me 3 hours to complete and I baked it in the oven for 10 minutes.