Handmade bird and raven skulls

As the title suggests this blog is about bird skulls. They seem to be big in Gothic and alternative fashion at the moment and that's what caught my attention. When ever I looked at Gothic fashion these skulls kept showing up. So I decided to give some a go from polymer clay. Now you must remember these are the first two I've ever made within this month. So since I made human skulls from polymer clay I thought I'd give bird skulls a go to. The first one I made was rather difficult but I managed to get the basic shape of a birds skull. The raven skull. WOW!! was that difficult!. As ravens have a longer beak and the detail is a bit harder to map out.

When I started making the bird skull I will admit that I was staring at my lump of polymer clay thinking where do I start?!. So I made a basic cone shape then put it on my work surface and shaped out the cone so the back was flat but still retained the cone shape. Then I sculpted the tip of the cone into more of a bird shaped beak. I then proceeded on to the eyes now that the beak shape was formed. I added shading to bring out the shape of the bird skull more, I sometimes feel that with polymer clay that if shading isn't added the shape of any skull really isn't pronounced, that it is missing a certain bit of ooomf.

Now on to the raven skull. Again I made the cone shape, but as you can see the detail on the skulls are completely different to one another. The ordinary bird skull is much more squat and raven skull is more elongated. Also the detail is very different, as you can see on the basic bird skull the nostrils are much further apart and aren't that pronounced.

The raven on the other hand as you can see is much more pronounced, the eyes sockets are larger and the nostrils are more pronounced, the contours stand out more and are much more defined. When I made the raven skull I just had a picture of a skull to copy. So I could grasp how to form the skull shape and from there went on to make the pendant. Now with the raven skull the detail I had to sculpt was much more in depth so I had to be much more aware of what I was doing. I managed to get the detail required to make it. I then shaded and defined the skull. I then made a background to put the skull on, I made a basic oval shape and sculpted swirls on the sides for decoration, I then dusted it with silver pigment. After I baked the pendant I used a high shine glaze just to magnify the skull in the middle of the pendant. For further decoration I used a black glass bead just for some added sparkle. 

before adding the glaze

After adding the glaze

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, I'm not an expert just love what I do. 

 Keep it spooky children of the night!!