Tuesday 25 November 2014

Roast Turkey Tutorial

You will need;
Polymer clay, either Fimo or Sculpey in White plus a small amount of flesh colour and a small bit of light brown,
Dotting tool or tooth pick or large darning needle.
Ball tool or end of a paintbrush.
old tooth brush,
fluffy paint brush,
fine ended paint brush,
earth tones chalk pastels,
Glaze made for polymer clay, i use gloss glaze from craftmill.co.uk.


First job, mix your clay, heres approximate proportion to make an off white cooked turkey colour. 
if you feel the clay is too soft, squash it between 2 sheets of clean paper for 10 mins and it will soak some of the ' oil' out or leave it to sit and cool down for a while. 


 next step. split your ball into these parts, try to get them equal in size, so you don't end up with one fat leg and one skinny leg !
mold these balls into the basic leg, wing and tail shapes below.



take the two leg pieces and join them together to get this shape, they are still quite rough at this stage so don't panic ! 



Take your big ball and gently squeeze the bum end so you get this shape.


Using a ball tool or end of a paint brush gently poke a hole in the bum end that you previously squeezed, Push up from the inside to get the rounded top. Press the tail on .

Using the ball tool, mark a line down to the breast, that ends in a fork,  gently prod with the tool to get the indented triangle shape.
Press your ready made legs and wings onto the sides, (legs to the squeezed end)

Carefully go around the joins and smooth them to the body, shape the bone ends with the side of your needle'toothpick,
Using the dotting tool, go over most of the body and legs making small 'dots' to give the impression of feather follicles, again this can be  quite rough, your bird should look like this now.



Take an old toothbrush, and dab it all over the bird, this will blend out the lumpier bits, but go careful over the wings, or you could squish them out of shape, practice on a bit of scrap clay first so you get the feel of how much pressure to apply to get the finish you want.


get your pastels, these are a set of earth tones, but there will be similar colours in any normal set of pastels
Scrape the pastels with a sharp blade, i have used 3 different light yellows mixed to get the base colour.

Using your fluffy soft paint brush, dust the pastels over the bird, gradually building up the colour, make sure you turn it over and do the underneath, this will let you see the bits you have missed from above.

Do the same with the darker yellow followed by light browns, but with a tiny amount of pastel,very lightly, over the parts that would get darker on a real cooked turkey



when you are happy with the colour, again you could practice on some scrap clay, use the small paint brush to add drops of water to the dark brown pastel, mix well and carefully add to areas on the bird where it may have got a bit over done in the oven !

Now take a sharp blade and cut thin slices with a sawing motion, you can leave a slice still attached if you want,

Now take your needle tool or darning needle and very carefully make the tiny lines to add texture to the breast and the slices.

Pop your bird in the oven and bake as recommended on your clays packaging, I use a halogen table top bowl oven at 125 degrees f,  for 30 mins. the best thing about these ovens is the heat up instantly so can be used to part cook clay for a couple of minutes if you are making small fiddly items.
Once your bird is cooled, glaze with a glossy glaze and leave to dry.
 And there you go, all ready to plate up on your Christmas table !
Hope this tutorial has been helpful :)


Made a start on Christmas dinner...