In the last few posts, I showed how I made my Troll Magnets for the Pekin Days Art Show. I thought I would next show how I created my three other pieces for this gallery show. My Larry, Moe, and Curly Trolls.
First off, I started with a steel wire armature. I used a drill to twist the wire. I didn’t get any photos of this method. I’ll try to remember that for a future post. After that, I bulk out the armature with aluminum foil and put it into the pose I’m shooting for. It might change a bit, but I try to keep it how I planned initially.
Here’s Curly. I wanted him to be picking his belly button with one hand and holding up his pants with the other: 
Here’s Larry. I wanted him to be sneaking off with a bag full of poached birds:
And here’s Moe. I wanted him to be roaring while peering off the side of a rock/cliff:
Here you can see that I added thin copper wire to the armature’s arms to form the hands and fingers. I did this because this wire is thinner and therefore more appropriate for the smaller appendages. And it’s also softer, making it easier to pose and adjust later on:
I added on the initial thin layer of clay:
The first sculpt I worked on of the three was Curly. I had this idea of making him deformed and having all sorts of growths and hanging fatty skin and such all over him. Lot of fun to sculpt. Did most of it while watching a couple things on Netflix the first night. Next to Curly is Larry with his temporary head and the tiny eyes I made for him:
And here’s a better shot of Curly’s progress. Pretty much have the form where I wanted it:
And here’s some progress on Larry. As you can see he needs a bit of a nose job. I ended up inserting a wire into that schnoz of his later on to get it to stick out and keep the rhythm of his pose consistant:
Moe ended up getting beheaded not too long after I started on him. He started out looking more humanoid than I wanted him to. Kind of a troll-hulk looking guy. So, I went in a completely different direction:
Here you can see what I meant by a different direction. I gave him a huge head with no neck. His giant head basically comes right out of his chest. I think it lends itself so much better to the pose and the overall character:
There was a lot more work that I did on these. The next post will show more about how I finished them off and detailed the skin.
More to come! Stay tuned!
Josh Hagen 