Next, it is time to sculpt the head. When sculpting the heads for my art dolls, I often create a foil-packed (to make it more lightweight) epoxy clay center to act as an armature, and then sculpt a layer of polymer clay over the epoxy clay after it’s cured. This allows me greater flexibility in working time, as the polymer clay stays workable until I bake it. For the raven head, I want the beak to be all epoxy clay, because it’s long and thin and will be more prone to breakage. So I start with packed foil in the general shape of a raven skull, and cover it with the epoxy clay. I give the beak a finished look, but just leave the rest of the head rough, as it will be covered by more clay.
I also roll out several little balls of epoxy clay and let them cure, and then use a pair as the raven’s eyeballs. I set them in the eye sockets I had sculpted in the skull form, sticking them down with more epoxy clay. Using already-cured eyeballs this way allows me to keep the surface of the eyeball smooth and round as I sculpt other features around it. Then, I bulk out the head a bit more by packing foil around it to build up the general shape of the feathers, using little bits of epoxy clay to hold the foil pieces in place. Packing foil into a sculpture like this really cuts down on weight and saves on clay.
After that has cured, I add a layer of polymer clay to the head and spend a lot of time sculpting the feathers and the eyelids, and getting the texture and expression I want. I bake the polymer clay to cure it, and the head is done.
Next I have to attach the head to the body. I’ve left a bit of the body armature sticking up to give me something to attach the head wires to. I bend the head wires out to the side so they will end up stabilizing the head on the shoulders, and I use a bit of electrical tape to hold the whole thing together on the neck wires. Then, I add some epoxy clay around the neck to cement the various armature wires together.
