Bead Chat Magazine Winter 2014 | Page 30

Sculpting With Clay By Natalie McKenna Ok, so I’m not the worlds greatest sculpter but it’s great fun and the more you do it, the better you get at it! Another ceramic artist once told me that to make my work unique I should sculpt my own pieces. Up until that point I’d been using moulds and textures I’d bought and thought to myself “argh, I can’t sculpt!”. Having never really tried it, I didn’t think I’d be much good at it, but it turns out I’m not too bad at all... plenty of room for improvement though, and practise makes perfect! I long to be able to sculpt like Cynthia Thornton, (such minute detailing...fabulousness!!) and hopefully that will come with time and a good set of opti-visors! Sculpting now happens to be one of my favorite parts of the whole “clay” process, but also the most time consuming...but relaxing too. I love nothing more than to turn off social media for a little while, sit at my desk, get Netflix on the go and get out some clay and my old bag of tools. Tools! I have so many, but I always need more! I’ll talk about textures in a future article, this one will be focusing mostly on the different type of tools I use plus a little about the process! The tools pictured are my own and are not too clean looking (covered in clay!) but you’ll get the general gist! creativebeadchat.com Animal beads I sculpted last year. My first attempt at sculpting...ever!