PART 1

As promised, here is the first part of the post I said I'd do yesterday when I spammed all of you readers with wonderful paper lips (Say what you will, they're gorgeous).

So since I had food poisoning last week, I thought I'd capitalize on the new time slot in my day, and the fact that I felt like I was going to die, by working on my Goddess of Death character. I should add that I have, like, five or six other characters to work on........ But too late now.

As most of you readers may know (and for those who don't), this is generally how a paper model looks when you start out. It's flat. You could also say, paper thin. As you can see, there are little white tabs surrounding the face, those allow you to connect the parts and have them hold together. If you've never built a paper model, the tabs can be very effective, if you don't drown them in glue. Possibly speaking from experience on that one.

Next of course, you cut it out and build it. It's pretty straight forward, like a connect the dots, minus the numbers and the dots. I dunno, they just make sense to me. So now we have a head, lets sculpt.

I don't know if you can see it, but I added little pencil lines where I want the features. Normally I don't bother, but this character has a very unique set of features and I wanted to make sure that I captured them. Also, her face needed to be longer, hence her... Beard? Anyway, you usually want to cut that off. Just saying.

First things first, I like to start with the nose . It's a fairly noticeable feature and it tends to stick out farther than the forehead, at least in most cases. Once the nose is placed, using a piece of your choice of top notch, high quality, sculpting material; in this case bathroom paper towel, the kind that takes paint off of walls (I'm trying to cut back on coffee). Move on to the "cheekbones"

Depending on the character, you might choose to build out the Zygomatic bone, doing that for a few layers can give it some really good strong definition. This character doesn't need definition. So that being said, I just took tiny squares and placed them where I wanted them.

Also, when you're doing this, DO NOT CUT THE SCULPTING MATERIAL. Tear it gently and slowly. The reason being, it blends a lot easier with the base, and other layers. Any abnormalities with the tear can be sorted out with careful manuvering of the material with a fine tool, dental tools work swimmingly. Cut paper has a hard edge. The only time its okay to cut it, is on the first layer it'll get covered and the harse edges hidden. So again, DO NOT CUT THE SCULPTING MATERIAL.

Now, we move on to the long part, there isn't too much to say up ahead since it just comes down to layers, lots of layers. So enjoy my pictures.

Now, as you can tell, at least I hope you can, I haven't started on the lips yet. I haven't started them yet because I don't want to mess them up. Lips are tedious and unique, and require special attention. So I've been focusing on building up everything else. When you do, you need to vary the shape/size of pieces you put down... Otherwise you could end up with box face.

Now we start on the lips. I'll be honest, I didn't get a lot of pictures for this step... Mostly because I was focused and I didn't want my phone covered in glue. But it's the same process, lay down thin strips of paper and shape them. I highly recommend dental tools for this step since it is very delicate, and tedious.

I hope everyone enjoyed this post, part two will be on the torso and all the joys of layers. This head was pretty fun, one of my new favorites too.