Sorry these photos aren't better, I
will update when I get a good light to shoot these under. I worked more on getting the colors than the crispness of the photos.
These are mixes of Gold with Yellow/Black/White
These are mixes of Gold/Fuchsia/Red/Orange/Copper
EXTRUDING & LOADING YOUR CLAY GUN
Now that you have some basic colors, extrude some of
each, using your favorite leaf shaped disks. Make sure you have a variety of shapes and colors, you don’t want all your maple leafs to be one color, and all your oak leaves to be another. Don’t slice your leaves, you’ll need to let
them firm up first. Just extrude them and put them somewhere safe from dust and cat hair while you work on your other leaves.
For the variable shading, I use the technique Nan Roche
demonstrated on the Carol Duval Show - stacking different colors so that they “mix” when being extruded through the clay gun. This technique creates gradual shading changes along the outside of an extruded length of clay, but when you
slice into that length of clay, you’ll see the different colors have wrapped around each other, with the first color of the stack being on the outside. I didn’t want too dramatic a change in color on my leaves, so I used colors from my
Autumn palette that are similar when stacking the colors into the clay gun.
EXAMPLE ONE,
I used the basic technique of color stacking, nothing fancy, but I did vary the thickness of the first and third layer, so that color will only cover the outermost edges of the leaf shape once extruded.
EXAMPLE TWO,
I again used a thinner layer for the beginning color, but I used two colors for the interior of the leaf, one color for 1/2 of the layer, another color for the other half. (For more variation flip the 1/2 sections as pictures in the clay photo
example)
EXAMPLE THREE
is almost identical to the second, except I used the half and half section of clay as my first layer, so each half of the leaf will be surrounded with a different color.
EXAMPLE FOUR
makes use of the scraps you will have, and this usually creates the most interesting leaves. Take some of your left over clay, and mix it up into a solid color, take the rest of the scrap clay and “marble” it - just mix it up a little,
don’t mix it until you can’t see the different colors. Then create your layers and stack them as shown into the clay gun. Or just put the marbled clay into the gun as it is, you’ll still get
great leaves.
Those are four basic examples of how I get my leaf
shading, but you can combine any of these lessons for even more variations. I like to take the clay that’s left in the gun after each extrusion and mix it up into the first layer for the next batch. This way you get an ever changing variation of color -- and it all works together because you’ve started with the same basic color.
SLICING AND APPLICATIONS
After extruding your leaves, clean the disks as directed,
and put these new extrusions away with the first ones you did. To get good slices, you’ll need to let these sit for quite some time. You can also freeze them, but I’ve had better luck by just
leaving them alone, at least for 24 hours. Once the clay has stiffened up enough to slice them, take your individual slices and use your needle tool to create the veins of the leaves. The leaves
are then ready to be placed on your project. I try to place them in a way that shows off their different colors and shapes. Like placing a darker color over a lighter one, and vice-versa. I try to
keep the placement pretty random also, so that you don’t end up with more of one color in one section of the project.
