![]() To keep the back interesting (and hide the bail, which wasn’t that attractive), I molded three owls (using a commercial mold made for polymer clay) and stuck them together. Once that was done, I added a bail to the back. There was a great deal of sanding and going over the piece with a damp sponge to smooth out all the rough edges. I finished by adding the teeth and doing some refinement on the eye.Īs you can see, this piece is fairly rough. I added more pieces of copper, building up the look of Northwest Pacific art. I then attached the pieces to one another, so that the piece had a cut-out of the head. I textured the thicker circle (by hitting it with the bristles of a pet’s hairbrush!) and cut out the shape of the wolf’s head. Then I cut out a thicker (1 mm) circle of the same size. Since clients often look at the back of a piece before buying it, I made the back interesting too (details to follow).įirst, I cut out a thin (0.5 mm) circle of clay. I’m going to talk about making a wolf’s head pendant in the Northwest Pacific style in copper, and then applying a heat patina. There is no right or wrong answer here - it’s the effect you want to achieve. This gives unpredictable results, often a brown with hints of the earlier bright color. (2) Just let the piece sit and cool naturally. This will preserve the color more or less as you see it. When you have achieved a degree of color, you can go in one of two routes: (1) pick the piece up with tongs, place it in a heatproof container, and place it in the freezer. bronze, red, blue, purple). You can run the flame in circles, or in waves, or in lines - each will produce a different effect. As you run the flame over the surface, you will see colors begin to appear (e.g. If you don’t, a kitchen torch will work just as well. ![]() Run the flame of a torch lightly over the surface. ![]() One the piece is clean, it is placed on a heat-proof surface. Just be sure that, once the piece is perfectly clean, you only touch it by the edge (or, better still, just use tongs!). This can be achieved by using some form of prenamel (a produce for cleaning metal clay prior to applying enamel) - but, if you don’t have prenamel, lemon juice will work. With heat patinas, it is best to make certain your work is perfectly clean (that is, no finger oils remaining). Heat patina’s are achieved by making your piece out of copper clay in all the usual ways (forming, cleaning greenware, firing, brushing, tumbling). However, when working with copper (and, to a lesser degree, bronze), there is yet another alternative, the heat patina. We are probably all familiar with chemical patinas: LoS for silver, copper, or bronze, salt, vinegar, and ammonia for copper, Baldwin’s patina for copper, etc.
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