Ideas for Creature Making

A roly poly soot dragon. The current idea, and the many iterations of it. I have a large box of donated fur coats to make creatures out of. Normally i wouldnt pick real fur to work with, but the coats are not in good enough of shape to be worn or donated for anything else, so I shall make creatures. So far I have mostly brown, dark rust, and black fur, with a little faux gray and really cheap tan. So cheap I'm having second thoughts about using it at all. Maybe to practice with.c

Creature Making Inspiration

this one is mine

Its hard to define the kinds of creatures I want to make, but done of the first steps that I can do it find things like it.
I have quite a bit of random materials, and would love to populate a craft booth with creatures like these.


This  is a good example of the kind I want to make:
http://www.dollmakersdream.com/free-polymer-clay-tutorials-creature-6.html

Its semi realistic, soft bodied, and also has polymer clay sculpting.










Also like these:
http://santani.deviantart.com/art/I
nari-Foxes-418720127

http://lisatoms.deviantart.com/art/Silver-aqua-dragon-spirit-411076252

http://wood-splitter-lee.deviantart.com/art/SOLD-Poseable-Hand-Made-Baby-Fum-420878939

http://scenceable.deviantart.com/art/Exalt-435968577

Polymer Clay Creature Concept Drawing

I've been driving to make more polymer clay creatures. Maybe one day to design them for mmorpgs or illustrate them for card games. Here's a sketch.

A Riddle For The Outcast and Lonely

There is a special section in the store just for these items. They are often set apart from the others. The majority of customers do not buy them, or even look for them. When you do look for them, you can look very hard and be very excited when you find it.  Sometimes they have special packaging. They fluctuate in quantity, you never know what you will find.You feel like you got a deal when you buy it. Often, it is what you can afford.


      So, is it discount merchandise at the grocery store, or a rare gem at a jeweler's?

  Maybe you feel you are cheap , that no one searches for you. That you are weird. And you find yourself thinking you are a malformed item on a discount shelf. But perhaps the truth is very different.


God refines us though fire, and the result is something more valuable than fine gold. He sets us apart so we are no longer common, we are precious.

But we are costly, and few will pay for something rare when they can get something shiny and pretty for much cheaper. 

At what cost to them? And yet, it is their loss, and they don't even bother to find out why. Our packaging it different. We have something to guard. There's security, laser lines and
pressure plates like a rare jewel in a museum. And we don't have to  apologize for our boundaries when they protect something precious.

.

heheheheh

Few have the skill to navigate those boundaries, because few appreciate the value, and even less are willing to put in the effort to get it.






Don't apologize for your boundaries when you protect something precious. Don't worry that you are hard to find, that God puts you in the back of the store. He's protecting you, he knows you are valuable, and only those who know the high cost can have you.

For we are far above rubies.

Encouragement From Success and Encouragement From The Trenches

To pay my bills, I work as a janitor. And I hate it with a passion.

Monotonous, and doing the EXACT thing day after day with no accomplishment or anything that really gets "done." And it doesn't really use much brain power either. Which is hard when I have 180 credit hours from college and I'm not
using a single one.

When you find your passion, and are prevented from using it, everything you do tastes like ash.

And it's in this situation that I feel God wants me to write a book, a devotional workbook for artists.
Most of these kinds of books are written by people who work at art as a living, or at least full time, maybe even through church. And I would think there are a lot of artists who don't.

This book would be written by one in the trenches. By one who hasn't had the "success" of profit through art, or the joy of being able to do it full time, and is not writing it out of that confidence. Also, I don't have that kind of success to validate what I am saying. But if God wants me to write this, why should I need ANYTHING else to validate my credibility? Worldly success won't validate it more than God does. Noah didn't have a degree in ship building. If you don't listen to me just because I don't have the resume that you think I need to qualify to write this, you are dismissing God's truths based on worldly value. So I won't tell you what I have that would remotely qualify me to write all this.

It's more important right now that I'm not, and that I haven't seen success yet, and that I am writing out of a place in the trenches, with the rest of you who also have not seen the success you want. It's easy to take the "advice" of a Christian artist who is successful and rich, apply it, and get happy or angry depending on how much that advice "worked."

It's easy to make faith based decisions when you see them physically rewarded.

But I write as a challenge to you to faith in the times when you aren't "successful," and have no confidence that you will ever be. That is where faith is tested. And we are very much in it together, I have no guarantee that this book will make any money. Maybe it can be free.

I wanted crowd funding to take time off to write the book. I have two jobs and don't want to quit either of them.But

I think God wants me to write this as janitor me. 

Not as a person working in the ministry full time, but someone who still struggles. On the other hand, if I don't depend on this for income, there is a lot less temptation to make it look and sound pretty just so it sells more. I'm after excellence and impact, not popularity. And I have the freedom to do that and my job isn't at stake. In a way, it's less of a risk. 

 Yes, I'm scared of being mediocre and amateurish. I'm scared of it being too big and my ideas getting in the way. I'm scared of all the permissions I have to get just to quote the Bible in my book.

I will do the thing. 

Now I actually need to do the thing.




I have already had opposition to the thing, which I take as a sign that its a good thing.