Simple Clay Sculptures: Adorable Bluebirds

1. Introduction: Hey, everyone. A very warm welcome. I am Mona. I am a clay artist from India with over 30 years of experience. I absolutely love to work with Airr, creating everything from sculpture to integrate miniatures. I am so excited to have you here for our Clay culture, adorable Bluebirds course. If you ever wanted to try your hands at clay or just create something unique and adorable, you are in the right place. In this course, we are going to embark on a fun and creative journey together. You don't need any prior experience with clay. That's right. Zero experience necessary. My goal is to guide you step by step through the entire process, making it easy and enjoyable. Over the next few lesson, you will learn on the fundamental techniques of working with clay, we'll cover handling and conditioning your clay, basic shaping techniques. Adding adorable details, and of course, we'll finish by adding beautiful decorative elements like leaves and flowers to bring your little birds to life. By the end of this course, you'll create your own adorable bluebirds culture that you can proudly display, give us a gift or simply admire. Are you ready to get creative and scarf some cute tests? I know I am. Let's grab our clay and jump into our very first lesson. 2. Materials : Let's take a look at the materials we'll be using for our project. Our main material is air dry clay, and I have taken a selection of colored clay. First, for the bark of our tree stump, I have some dark brown clay, and for the inner structure of the tree trunk, we'll be using this light brown clay. For our cute little birds, I have chosen this lovely teal blue clay. To add vibrant details, we have green clay for the leaves, pink for the delicate flowers, and yellow for the inner part of the flowers and beak of the birds. We also need just a tiny bit of black clay for eyes. Now, if you don't have pre colored air dry clay in these act sheds, don't worry at all. You can easily create them yourself using white air dry clay and acrylic colors. For dark brown clay makes brown red and blue acrylic color in the clay. To get a light brown simply makes brown and orange acrylic color into your white clay. For a light teelblue, you can make teal blue and white color in clay. The green for the leaves can be achieved with green acrylic color. And for the pink clay, make salmon pink. Yellow acrylic paint for yellow clay, black paint for black clay. This way, you have complete control over your color palette. Along with our colored clay, you will also need glue. Craft glue or all purpose school glue will work perfectly. In terms of tools, you will need a craft knife, ul, a ball tool, which is optional, but can be helpful for shipping and a few toothpicks for adding details and joining smaller pieces. With all our materials and tools ready, let's begin bringing our cute bluebirds on a stump to life. 3. Making of Tree Stump: First, we are going to create the base. This part will resemble a charming little tree stump. For this tree stump, I am using two shades of brown clay, light brown and dark brown. If you have colored clay available, feel free to use that. If not, you can easily mix your on colors using white clay and acrylic paints. To create the light brown color clay, I make brown and orange color in the clay. And for the dark brown, I make brown acrylic paint, a little bit of red, and a touch of blue. Mixing red and blue with brown helps to create a deeper, more complex dark brown. Now that we have our light and dark nown clay ready, we are starting to build our tree stump. For the inner part, I am using light brown clay. The very first step is to conditioning the clay for a little while or in other words, knead it. After that, we'll make a ball from it. Once you have a ball, roll it out to create a cylindrical shape. You can make any size you like. The one I'm making has a diameter of around 2.5 centimeter and a height of about two centimeter. But feel free to create it in any size that suits your birds. Now to create the bark of our tree stump, we'll take the dark brown colored clay, make a ball with it, then roll it out into a long and thick rule. After this, we'll use an acrylic roller to flatten it. The length and width of this platen piece should be enough to complete cover the light brown cylindrical we just made cut straight from one side. Check the size and cut off any excess part. Now, roll the dark brown strip around the light brown cylindrical to check the fit. Once you are happy with the size, apply glue to the dark brown strip, spread the glue evenly. H Then place the light brown cylindrical shape on it and stick. Using a toothpick, I am gently scoring the both ends, creating a rough texture so that the layers adhere well. Now using a toothpick, I'm creating a pattern to mimic good rings. Now, create the realistic bark texture on the outer side of our tree stumps. Make random deep lines. These lines should also slightly extend onto the top edges. So create lines all around the circumferences of the stump. Adjust the shape slightly if needed to make it look more natural. And there we go. The basic shape and texture of our tree stump are complete. Met you in the next video. 4. Let's Make the Blue birds : Our tree stomp is complete and it's time to bring our adorable birds to life. For our birds, I am using this beautiful blue clay. As I mentioned earlier, if you are mixing your own colors, you can achieve this shade by blending teal blue and white into your white air dry clay. First, it's really important to properly condition your clay. Kneading it throughly makes the clay wonderfully soft and much easier to work with, ensuring a smooth finish to our birds. Now let's make two small balls of clay, ensuring they are roughly equal in size. This will be foundation for our two birds. Let's take one of these ball first from this ball, take approx one fourth of the clay, and we will use this portion to create the body of a bird. Start by shaping it into a small bowl and then gently roll one end to form a teardrop shape. Let's check the size. Yes, it's looking perfect. Create the body for the other bird in the same way. Make a ball. Roll it at one end to make drop shape. Check the size. Looking fine. Now for the head, we will take a portion of clay, roll this into a smooth wall. It's about twice the size of the clay we used for the body. Now in the same way, let's make the head for the second bird. After forming the ball, gently press it from the top to give it a slight drop shape. Using your ball tool, create two small indention for the eyes. If you don't have a ball tool, you can easily use the tip of the toothpick or even the end of a paintbrush to make these small cavities. Make the head for the other bird. Next, we'll work on placing our bird's body. For this, I have applied some glue to the trees stem. Carefully position both birds bodies on the stem, making sure there is a small gap between them. After placing the body, take a toothpick and break it in half, insert one half of the toothpick into the top of the first bird's body. And fix head on it. Don't forget to apply glue. This will serve as an anchor to securely fix the head. Do the same for the second bird as well. Now let's create the wings for our birds. Take a small amount of clay and shape it into a tear drop, flatten this tear drop. Once flatten, gently tilt the pointed part upwards to give the feather a nice curve. Then using a toothpick, create two slanted line downwards from the top, check its size against the birds. It looks perfect. Now, create another feather in the exact same way for the bird other side of this bird. You can see how the second bird's feather is also being made the same way. Flattened pointed part, tilted up, impression made using a toothpick, and then stuck on Finally, to make the tail of our birds, create two very small balls of clay, then form teardrop shape, gently flatten each ball, and then add two lines with a toothpaste to give it some feather detail. Join these tail feathers securely to the back of the body, insert a small piece of toothpick into the back of the bird's body, apply a little glue to the toothpick, and then gently fix the tail feather onto it. Do the same for the second bird. Inserting the toothpick with glue, ensure that the feathers will not detach easily. Now take a little bit of remaining blue clay and make two small drop shapes, join them together at their pointed ends. Apply a little glue and fix this piece on the bird's head. Repeat this process for the second bird's head as well. Okay. For the yes, I have taken black colored clay. Make four tiny balls for each bird. Apply a small amount of glue into the ice cavity you made earlier and then carefully stick these tiny black balls into the place. And finally, to give our birds their beaks, I'm using yellow clay. Shape two small triangles for the beak and attach them using glue. So our birds are now ready, and they are beautiful pers on our tree stump. 5. Leaves and Flowers : So now we add leaves and flowers to the tree stump. For the leaves, I have made green clay by adding lime green colour to the white clay. And for the flowers, I have added salmon pink to white clay. First, let's make the leaves. For this, I have taken a little bit of clay, rolled it into a ball, then shaped it into a tear drop. Then I flatten it. And after flattening, we will make impression of veins on it. For this, I have used a ruler. First, make the central vein. And then in slanting lines on both sides, sideways like this. We'll make about five to six leaves. Oh No, stick them. Now we'll make the flowers. To make the flowers, I have taken a little bit of pink clay. I rolled it into a ball, then flatten it. After flattening with the help of a toothpick, I am making two lines in a plus shape. That is one vertical line and one horizontal line. After this, I am also making one line in between these lines. This way, it will have eight partitions, which will form our petals. Now from the outer ends of these partitions, we'll push the clay inwards with the help of a toothpick. You can see that the shape of the petals is becoming a bit clear. This makes each of the partition take the form of inducal petals. In the center, use a ball tool or finger to press and create a cup shape. Now for the eight partitions of the flow, we'll place a toothpick on each one and gently roll the toothpick. This will slightly spread and flatten the petals, and the toothpick will leave an impression on them, which will look like veins on the flower petals. So slowly our flour is ready. In the same way, we'll make another flour. It's not necessary for all your flows to be the same size. You can also make smaller one. For example, I am making this smaller one, and for this, I have made only four partitions. After making four partitions, I push the outer clay inner re Then as before, flatten and press each partition with the help of toothpick. You can see how good the impressions look on nt. In the center, I used a ball tool to press and create a cup shape. Now, stick these flowers on the leaves. For the center part of the flower, make small walls with yellow clay. And stick them on. In the last step, we'll draw the eyelashes and eyebrows with a permanent marker pen. I have only made eyelashes on one bird and leaving another one as it is. 6. Final Thoughts : Hey, everyone. This is the grand finale of our adorable bluebirds. We have made it. By now, you have sculpted your adorable bluebirds and added all those beautiful details. I'm so excited for you to see your finished creation, and I can't wait to hear what you think. Look how cute they are. I'm completely in love and just keep looking at them again and again. Aren't they delightful? Throughout this course, you have learned essential clay handling techniques, how to sculpt basic shapes, create intricate details like leaves and plants. You have truly transformed simple clay into something adorable. Now it's your turn to shine. I absolutely love to see the bluebirds you have created, please do share your project. If you are ready for more creative adventure, be sure to check out my other work. You can watch my other art and craft tutorials on my social media handles on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Search me as Monrti. Thank you so much for joining me on this creative journey. I hope you had a fantastic time, keep exploring and keep creating. Happy crafting.