Hi, I'm artist Lillian Gray
and today I am going to show you how to make a cute little red panda out of air-dry clay
I am using Dala air-dry clay, which for me is by far the greatest air-dry clay I have played with.
You can buy it at the link below and there is also a beautiful clay toolset that's
quite affordable and easy to work with.
For this lesson, you will also need a plastic fork and a sieve.
Step 1 is to cut your clay into smaller pieces that are easier to work with.
I've got my clay tension wire that I'm going to use to split this clay into four
After you have split the clay, you can move on to step 2, which is to wedge your clay.
I am kneading it, almost like bread dough. You want to avoid bringing too much air into the clay,
and trapping some air bubbles because that will make your clay burst and crack,
and that's what we really don't want. Air is the enemy of clay.
And I'm going to have a nice, soft, malleable ball of clay to start building the cutest red panda.
Step 3 is to start shaping your basic shapes.
Clay is very much like drawing. We use five basic shapes to construct the drawing when we draw,
and the same happens when we use clay.
Here you can see how I simplified my little sleeping red panda into basic shapes.
I'm going to have quite a big triangle for the face, I'm going to have
two triangles for the ears,
I'm going to have a big body that we are going to shape after this, and I'm going to have a tail.
We are not going to see his legs in the little sculpture I want to make,
what I like to create is a little red panda, sleeping in a tree
When making your basic shapes, always consider your proportions
How big should the head be? How big are the legs and the arms in relation to the body?
Are they all the correct size?
Here are my basic shapes. This will be my body, my head, my ears, and my tail.
The red panda, to me, looks like a combination between a fox, a racoon, a little bear, a cat.
It's just this fusion of cuteness overload.
Red pandas are highly territorial and live a solitary existence, except during mating season.
They love being active at night.
Red pandas live in Eastern Himalayas and South-Western China.
I had the opportunity to see them play in the New York Zoo when I was visiting New York,
and instantly fell in love. Sadly they are classified as endangered.
There are fewer than ten thousand red pandas in the wild.
It is estimated that there has been a 40 percent decrease in numbers over the last 30 years alone.
Step 4 is to refine your shapes.
This means we are going to tweak our basic shapes a little bit more.
I'll be wedging it, almost like a crested moon.
Step 5 is to join some of our basic shapes together.
We are going to join the tail, the body and the ears to the head.
Where ever I want to join clay, I need to use slip, and I need to scrape.
And I'm going to scrape, scrape, scrape. You can use a kebab stick if you don't have a clay pin.
I've got slip. Slip is the glue of clay. It's just a lot of water mixed with your clay.
It helps you to get rid of the air bubbles when you join two pieces.
I'm attaching my tail to my body.
And I am working this in.
I'm just going to put my body aside now and I'm going to work on my head.
The ears are on the side of the triangle, we don't want them on the top like a rabbit.
It's more to the side. First up, I'm going to scrape and join my ears.
Step 6 is to add the facial features.
We will be adding a cute little nose and some eyebrows.
I'm really going to build the nose and the little features now before I join the head to the body.
First I'm going to make little slits where his eyes are closed.
Then I'm going to add a little button nose
The button nose I'm shaping like a little teardrop.
They have very cute little eyebrows. They look like an old man.
I believe Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda is also a red panda.
I'm going to make the eyebrows now. They are just two fat, little worms.
I've got my little bushy eyebrows, folding over his eyes to give him that really sleepy look.
I'm going to work on the ears now and I'm going to take the back of my paintbrush
to really just create an indent here for the ears.
Step 7, we can now join the head to the body.
When I'm going to place him, I'm going to make sure that the head is at the angle that I want.
At the back of the neck, there might be a gap, so I'm going to make a little worm for extra support.
Step 8, let's add some texture.
I'm going to add some texture now, and some fuzz,
because I think them being so fuzzy is just the cutest thing ever.
I'm basically using a plastic fork and I just want to show you that we are going to be scraping.
I want to show a trick now to add some extra-fine hair if you want to.
I'm going to use a kitchen sieve now, and all we're going to do is take some clay,
and push it through the sieve. It doesn't matter, you can use any sieve you like.
I'm going to push the clay through the sieve, that gives me wonderful little hairs.
You need to use slip to attach these hairs. A few of them will fall off once they dry.
So I always try to add more than I need.
I have decided to call it Rory, the red panda and we're going to place the body on a plastic plate
so that she can get ready for her drying. Gently take her off and make sure not to damage anything.
We are going to cover her with plastic.
We want air-dry clay to dry extremely slow, especially for the first three days.
It has to lose moisture slowly, otherwise, it will crack.
Wrap her in plastic, put her in a cupboard. After three days you can remove the plastic.
Let her get some airflow, then take her out and put her in a room.
Never dry air-clay in direct sunlight. It will be a crack fest, and you don't want that.
And this our lesson on creating an incredibly cute, textured little red panda.
I hope you have enjoyed this lesson. If you have please give us a like, a thumbs-up,
and comment on the video below. Share some photographs of what you have created
on our social media channels, we would love to see.
Stay tuned for our next video where I will show you how to finish off Rory, the red panda.
I'm artist Lillian Gray, until next time.