Wesley Scoggins
Indy Mogul
Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Cursed Idol
In the past we've covered a lot of items of questionable safety (in the supernatural sense) , so I thought I would go ahead and help you live out another archeological adventure with your own Cursed Idol prop that you won't have to break into an ancient tomb and steal. (Not to mention the advantage of no boulders chasing you whenever you pick it up.)
First, I started with a bucket of my handy dandy air-drying clay, and a block of floral foam.
The foam is going to be the base of my "Idol", and I just want to carve it up a little to make it look a little more interesting, so I start cutting these vertical lines into the base. You can do a grid pattern, or carve swirls or whatever strikes your fancy, but I like how this looks so I am going to go with it.
Get a firm brush, and brush the lines to smooth them out and make them look cleaner.
Next, I carved some "alien" looking symbols into the foam around the top...
Then also hit them with the brush to clean them up.
Now for the figure on the block... I get a wad of clay that I break it up into two specific sections, the body, and the head. For the body I am making a basic cone shape. I don't want it too tall and skinny, or it will bend as it dries and not be able to support the head. Then the head which is just kind of general oval shape.
I want it to be very stable on the base, so I get a wooden dowel and just push it into the foam...
I got another piece of the dowel and dug a hole into the bottom of the "body" while the clay is still dry.
I push it down on the dowel, then wet the sides to blend it into the base.
Then I stick the head on, and blend it to the body, making sure it's very stable all around.
Next, I start to add details with the blunt end of a paint brush and a wet Q-tip, I draw eyes onto the face, and form rudimentary arms and legs out of additional pieces of clay. Then flatten out a few more and add them on the back as "wings".
Next I took some tiny pieces of clay, and rolled them out into strands, then attached them onto the face as "tentacles".
For your own creature you could do anything you want, and you don't have to follow my design at all, but i'm a Lovecraft nerd so it's pretty obvious why I picked this design. Any kind of simple design will do, very simple work could even be beneficial for a build like this since the simpler it is the older it can look, so don't doubt your sculting skills here. I have terrible sculpting abilities and I put this together in about half an hour, so trust me when I say I know all you guys and gals out there can do better.
The next step is the painting.... BUT since I am working with clay, I have to wait for it to dry before I can do additional detail work and start painting it...
EDIT: 03-30-09 - So Monday is here, and the clay has now reach the "bone dry" level. Something that you can do if you're using clay like me, is to poke some tiny holes into the thickest part, this lets air get to the deep parts more easily, and drastically speeds up drying times, especially if you're making a thicker figure like I did.
I started the painting by taking black paint and tracing into every crevice and hard to reach place with a tiny brush.
I then start with a base-layer of dark green paint (because I want it to look a little like jade, or very old copper).
I then take additional clay and smear it around on the statue. I do this, because the next layer will absorb into the statue unevenly, helping to further the illusion of a kind of marbled texture to it.
I then mixed up some silver paint and a little green paint and went over the entire statue.
I then took some black indian ink and painted the entire statue with it with a wide brush.
Then took a tissue and rubbed it off of the easiest to reach places, helping darken the little crevices and pits on the statue to help make it look a bit aged.
And there you go, next I just coated the entire statue in a layer of urethane to seal it and make it hard and shiny looking to help make it look like it's made out of polished stone or metal.
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