Madelyn was a project for a web contest where you had to sculpt something with the letter ‘M’. Not to be outdone, I had to come up with 5 ‘M’s! Meet Madelyn

The Flamingo Mount was absolutely the funnest the part of this project. Funny story – when I started the project, I didn’t pay close attention to my flamingo reference and bent his leg backwards! Fortunately, someone noticed and pointed me in the right direction before I went too far and I was able to break it off and put a new one on. I pay much better attention to reference photos now!

There’s a lot about Madelyn that I would do differently if I had the chance. Because I was making her for a contest, I had to follow the contest rules, only 10% non-clay items. I think her skirt would be awesome with an actual textile rather than the clay feathers. I also tried a beading technique that wasn’t quite as successful as I wanted. I don’t hate it, I would just do it differently now. Here she is from the back

She’s so naked right! Girl needs a little more clothing. To get the flamingo’s feathers nice and supported, I used a piece of cardstock paper glued to his armature. Works perfectly, no?

Since this point her in life, I’ve worked on her hair quite a bit. It isn’t nearly as crazy now, but could probably still use a few more tweaks. My favorite part – the floor. It has a bit of mica power on it to help make it shiny in just the right places.

Madelyn won a ribbon at the NC State fair. You can see here with her ribbon in this post.