Hello my sweet honey bunnies and welcome to My Mandarin Ducky. This is an Elephant Journal Tutorial! Finally! The one you’ve been waiting for for almost a year. I know, it took me some time to come back! So lets start with the tools, shall we? For this tutorial you will need: Brown clay, knife tool, ball tool, rubber shaper, potters rib or a blade, screwdriver with multiple small endings, working surface to work and bake on, some acrylic paints in gold and white, Guilders Paste Green Patina and Burnt Umber oil paint. Let’s start with the clay. For this journal I have used Living Doll clay by Sculpey, but as it’s no discontinued, any other brown clay will be good. For an A6 journal cover I will need around two small clay blocks or something around that amount. Soften and condition your clay properly and roll it through the pasta machine on levels from 0 to 2 gradually. Make sure the clay sheet is large enough to fit an A6 size template. I have this old Sculpey texture sheet that is exact size I need, but you can always make a cardboard template of an exact journal size you require. Place the template onto the clay sheet and cut around it with the blade. Get rid of the excess clay and leave a perfect A6 clay sheet. Adjust and rearrange it if you need to. My one went a bit wonky. The next step would be to apply some texture. My todays choice is a texture from Cool Tools that looks quite like an Indian pattern to me. The impression doesn’t need to be perfect, as we will have a lot of stuff going on top of it. After that’s done, take some more clay and roll a sheet of clay on level 3 through your pasta machine. We will start cutting out little stamp impressions in the shapes of paisley and flowers. I have this stamp set by Viva Decor that is perfect for that. All you need to do is imprint the stamp into clay, cut it out and then place it wherever you think is good. I decided to decorate the corners of the journal with it, as in the middle I am planning to put the elephant’s head. Once all elements are placed into their positions, take a sculpting tool and start working on the edges of the paisley elements. You want them to merge with the background in a very decorative manner; therefore you will need to make many stroke-like movements to achieve this look. After that you can also use a screwdriver with replaceable heads and use the smallest you have to imprint little stars around every paisley element. I know, it’s a lot of work! But this is exactly what makes the artwork so detailed and breathtaking. You can also use a sculpting tool to make more strokes around the paisleys and to fill in the empty spaces. It may seem a bit weird or unnecessary, but in the end you will see how all of that effort will pay off really well. The more into details you go, the crazier will be the carved wood effect in the end. So, when that is done, we can move onto the elephant’s head. Start with the ears. Cut them out and place them onto your journal cover. Remember that the ears may not remain in this position permanent. We may still shift things around. Work on the realistic ear shape. They are wavy and flexible, so they will have a lot of folds and creasing. For the elephant’s head we will need to condition some clay very well and roll it into a ball. Then give it a bit of a teardrop shape and … as I said before.. Some things may need to shift around a little. In this case I did put the ears too far apart from each other. Now I need to fix it. So… To make sure the ears are really well connected to the head I need to stick them to the back of the actual head and only then place it all onto the journal cover.
To make the skull more realistic you will need to form the areas for the eyes by just simply pressing your fingers into the clay. We have already formed the base of the trunk by pulling some clay out of the head piece. Now we will need to roll a clay cane for the rest of the trunk. Make the thicker part to look like a cup, so we can connect it together with the rest of the head. And now, by pushing, pulling and smoothing - create a perfect elephant’s trunk and get rid of the excess thickness if you think that the trunk has gone too thick or too flat. Here the trunk got stuck to the journal base too much and I had to peel it off again so that I can roll it in a cute little roll. To make nostrils, I used one of the smallest ball tools I had. Before we go into working on smaller details, we will need to add two pockets for elephant tusks. After that we need to add tusks as well. I am using Living Doll clay in pale skin color, but you can use ivory or a mix of white and brown. One of the tusks was longer than the other so I had to trim it. Now it’s time for the eyes. Here I am using the glass eyes on the black wire, but you can use clay eyes or flat cabochon eyes. Whatever you prefer. Every animal has eyelids, so it’s essential for our elephant to have them too. You can make them from a half moon shaped piece of clay. The thickness shouldn’t be more than 1 mm. You can see how I am using a couple of my favorite tools for smoothing and connecting pieces together. Ball tools, rubber shapers and some other sculpting tools are my favorite tools that rotate constantly in my hands. As you can see the gap over the top eyelid ON the left side is much deeper than the one on the opposite side, so I had to add up some clay to cover it up. Now the head with the eyes look even and proportional. We can move onto working with smaller details. Elephant’s trunk is a very flexible part of elephant’s body, so it naturally has a lot of creases, folds and lines as well as deep and rough elephant skin texture. We should take all that into account. It is also very important to make realistically looking ears. You need to add some skin texture; more folds and creases, some movement and flow by using something like a larger ball tool and a sponge. The tusks also have some texture, because elephant does use his tusks quite a lot. They are usually covered with scratches and sometimes even little cracks, depending on how old the elephant is. So to make the tusks realistic, use the knife tool and make some texture.
Now the elephant’s head is all done and it’s time to decorate it with a lovely Indian pattern cover. Indian elephants always look so festive during festivals, and this is the style we are trying to achieve. I am using the same style small silicone stamps by viva decor to make a round element for elephant’s head. Once it’s placed onto the head, you will need to decorate it with more stars, lines, dots to make it look even more beautiful. A decorative headpiece like this would always have tassels and a fringe, so that’s what I am going to do now with my knife tool.
I also want to make sure that every little dot on this pattern has been deepened with a fine ball tool. Later on I will use these little holes to place golden micro beads in them. The easiest way to do it is by using tweezers. Each micro bead needs to be pushed deeper in to the clay to make sure it doesn’t fall out after baking. I think it will look very nice to have a large tassel hanging down from the elephant’s forehead. Draw a lot of threads with your knife tool to make a rich thread texture. Now the elephant is fully sculpted and it’s time to work on surroundings. I can see my elephant walking through the mighty willows and so I will sculpt some willow branches that wave around in the wind. You can decorate your elephant’s surroundings in any way you like. Couple of grass blades will finish the look and will give the elephant some imaginary ground to walk on. And if you haven’t had enough of texturizing, you can fill in any unfinished or empty part of the background with some hand-drawn or hand-dotted swirly patterns. And as my personal finishing touch, I always create an outline border for my journal covers and so I also suggest you do the same. In the end of the day, every artwork has to have a frame. Now even the edges out, make sure the size is still correct and nothing is distorted and if everything is alright, it’s time to bake! Bake your journal cover according to your clay manufacturers instructions or a little bit longer. Now it’s time to apply the most magical paint ever. Burnt umber oil paint is my best friend when it comes to working with brown clay elements. After applying it as a wash, you will see how much all of the details will pop out and every little dot will become so visible! So first you need to apply the paint and then wipe the excess paint with a wet tissue. We need the paint to only remain in the deeper gaps and the top surfaces to be paint free. It look like I am applying patina straight away, but I actually gave the oil paint to dry for about a day. Oil paint does dry quite a long time, but a day is enough to apply patina afterwards. I love applying green patina very much. Sometimes I do it with the brush or most of the time I actually use my fingers. And if there is an area you can’t reach with the wipe alone, use a toothpick and force the wipe into this tricky place with it. Brown oil paint was to darken the artwork and to give it a feel of age and time, and green patina will work like highlights and will enhance the highest and the most intricate parts of the journal to make them even more visible. To me there is no India without gold, so we also need to add some golden accents and shading too. Again, it’s a complete freestyle, but a good way to not get lost in decorating, is to follow the natural shapes of the stamped pattern. I had so many decorative paisley, swirls and lines on the background level of the journal, I don’t even need to improvise. I just paint the little sections of the pattern like the coloring book. We are now seconds from finishing this journal and I would like to thank you for staying with me till the end. Now you can enjoy the final result! Thanks again for watching and don’t forget to follow me on social media platforms all over the net. I will see you soon! Bye!