Today I've been working on the second version of my Nine Ladies painting. The picture is fundamentally unchanged but the figures are larger and there is more closeness and less space around the edges.
To accurately shade model the neolithic monument I made the plasticine model above, I'll be using the same model as in the original.
The ladies and the strange lamenting trees are new models made from Claydium, an air-dried clay that is preferable to plasticine sometimes. In this case the thin branches would tend to droop if made from soft clay. I supported them and used a hair-dryer to fix them in only a few minutes. The clay is reasonably solid but isn't very strong (if dropped!) and reacts badly to water. PVA "varnish" is recommended by some but I think a good wood varnish or epoxy resin is better.
