Sculpting a Bunny

Hello, this is Teacher Maria and today at our School of SFB we are going to sculpt a bunny. Bunny is a zodiac symbol of the upcoming Chinese New Year. For inspiration I will look at some more or less traditional zodiac sculptures of bunnies and sculpt my own unique bunny based on what I saw. I recommend that you do the same, do not copy mine. I will need a couple of paper plates, air dry clay, some water and acrylics. I am making five clay balls of three different sizes. This is the bunny, back legs and front legs, the smallest ones. I pull and roll the biggest ball into a sausage with one side smaller than another. And I repeat it for the back leg. Bunny's legs are really long, but we normally see them in a bended position. Here I drew a human and a bunny in the same pose. Pay attention how long the bunny's foot will be and how massive his muscles are compared to humans. Now making two sausages for the front legs or you can say arms and starting putting it all together. I decided to make a head and a body out of one piece of clay, but I will be attaching legs and ears. If a leg is too big I can remove extra clay on the back of it. For the better connection of clay pieces I recommend scratching a little bit on both of them and adding some water in the middle. Also don't forget to press very well. When a clay dries out it shrinks and there will be cracks between the pieces that are not properly attached. Final touches, adding the puffy tail, defining the knee, drawing the eyes, make sure they are on the same level and the same size more or less. While drawing the eyes constantly turn your plate back and forth and compare them. Nostrils, lips, fingers and I decided to give my bunny a flower to hold. For a smooth surface dip your finger in water and go over everything. Now I decided to add some engravings of flowers on the surface like on the traditional Chinese figurines. And now I'm ready to paint it. I want some light pinkish bluish color and I'm mixing it out with a few colors on my plate. Remember that you can mix any color you want. When I paint around the patterns I carefully point the tip of my brush always at the line I'm outlining so I can fully control it. If you change your mind about the color you can wipe it off and repaint it like I did with this pink flower. I made it blue and then yellow. I'm using the very tip of my brush to paint small details like the eyes and little accents on the flowers. And my bunny is ready. Let's start working on yours. Good luck.