Talty's WIP #1 Roses

I realized that some artists make work in progress (WIP) updates, and they're quite enjoyable. It's fun to see what they're doing, how they organize their work area, even how messy or neat they are. Well I decided I would try to make some myself and see how it goes. I decided to start with roses, because that's what I was crafting when I decided I wanted to make this kind of blog entries.

Please keep in mind that my WIP photos will be a bit "raw". I don't want to spend too much time editing them or trying to find a good lighting, so please forgive the relative low quality. Pretty much the only thing I did was crop them so the files aren't too big.

So, this is how my petals start, pretty much a skinner blend bull's eye cane. I don't worry about making it too perfect, roses aren't perfect after all. I cut slices and then cut them in half. I find it easier this way.

Then I flatten the petals one by one. I like to shape them like a real petal, I know a lot of people like to make circles but making petals makes sense to me. It helps me.

Here's a bunch of them ready to be used. I swear that paper is clean! The greasy spots you see is the plasticizer being leeched out of the clay, that's actually a very useful technique for which I plan to make a tutorial one day.

Here's a couple of finished roses, ready to be baked. Notice the tv's reflection in the baking pan, having a good tv show or movie is an essential step of my creative process. My favorite are old movies I've already seen so I don't get distracted, but good enough to get me in a good mood. We also watch re-runs of Friends for the 1000th time.

That concludes my first WIP. I can already tell that it's very poor and uninteresting. I didn't take photos of me making the roses because I can't yet figure out how to do it, making roses requires that I use both my hands all the time. I plan to make a tutorial for this, as soon as I can figure out a way to take photos.