Monkeying Around with Clay

I wanted to share one of my latest clay projects that I've been working on for the last phase of my certification process. I absolutely love monkeys because it has a lot of sentimental value for me so I decided to base my final deco clay project on them.  I drew a lot of concepts and it finally evolved to the image above.  Bernie graciously painted the concept out for me in color and I absolutely love how he captured the cuteness of the baby monkey so perfectly!

The gorilla head on top is what Bernie made while I made the one on the bottom. Since Bernie is an excellent sculptor as well as a painter, he gave me some helpful techniques to make it look more realistic.  As you can see, his looks more realistic, but a little scarier than the one I made. I think it has to do with the fact that he works for a game company where he draws monsters all day long!

After I made the head and the body, I made a base out of a lazy susan I bought from bed bath and beyond with a 20% off coupon of course and some styrofoam.

Then I made some grass and placed the monkey on top of it.  I wanted it to have some more character so I added a backpack with some detail on it.

I love the detail with the buckle and the clay almost looks like it's made of suede.

Here's what the backpack looked like on my blue friend.

After I was done with the gorilla, I needed to make his little brother and since I wanted the baby monkey to look just right, I made two sample heads.  I also made some small flowers to add to the grass because I wanted them to look like they were walking through a meadow of flowers.

And here's the final product! This took me two weeks working non stop to complete and I am definitely happy with the results =)