This guy was meant to be an African or Indian totem or mascot, or some other strange word. The funny thing about it is, that it is made out of wood using a regular kitchen knife. The wings are separate pieces and the whole thing is a bit "wobbly". It's painted with tempera colours. And, I have to admit, my father helped me for the black curved yellow-dotted lines... I must have been about 10 years old then.

Strangely enough, this is an elephant. It's made out of clay. Not polymer, just normal clay. It's not the kind of clay used for making pots, but a special one used for modelling. After you make the figure you leave it in the sun, and in a couple of hours it almost turns to stone. A very primitive technique, as you can see, the one people must have been using long before they found out how to use fire. :)  But innovations were made to it, of course. As soon as the elephant was dry and hard, I painted it with tempera colours. I don't remember distinctly, but its very probable that it was afterwards sprayed with hair spray. This procedure was meant to prevent the colours from falling off, but it obviously didn't.

This guy, with the glasses, was made in the same way as the elephant. The curious thing is, I made his mouth by making a hole in the clay with one of my fingers. Actually you cannot see the mouth from the picture, but the raw truth is, now I can't fit any of my fingers in it any more!  This is the typical predecessor of what I make now.

This here is one of the first frogs I made after I discovered polymer clay. Actually it wasn't Me who discovered it, and it wasn't exactly a discovery either, but... The matter of fact is, I made this frog from a local brand of polymer clay, called "Plastolyte". It holds a piece of glass I found somewhere. I found two such pieces, as you'll see. So the glass bit is meant to look like a pearl. A frog with a pearl.

This here is a Ninja Turtle. They used to be quite popular when I was even younger :) . And I used to do quite a lot of cartoon characters then. Not precise copies, but from my memory. This must have been useful, I guess. It was FUN for sure. But the thing that is most fun to do, is to make critters from your own imagination. If you have a toy truck, for instance, and the truck driver is not green enough, or not fat enough, or he's just not the right guy, make a better one yourself ! This is especially true for creatures that nobody knows exactly what they look like - Goblins, Elfs etc. Inventing new species is fun too.

This guy was born on 7 Feb 1999 in the afternoon. I don't like generalizing at all, but this is is probably the first one of the kind I still enjoy making nowadays. I'm trying to pay more attention to their faces.

 

So this is the kind of stuff I produce nowadays. More human-like characters, I experiment with more clays and more non-clay objects.
 
To see the more of these go to critters.eu.