Self-Portrait of myself as a Dr. Seuss character. A few weeks ago I posted Karen Lou Who, a sculpture of my fiance as a Dr. Seuss character, this week it’s my turn.

I had to make the matching figure to go with Karen Lou Who. I started with a wooden skewer for support then roughed out the basic shape.

There were a few liberties I had to take with my sculpture over the drawing. I made the sculpture a little fatter…because we’re all getting older. And the legs a little thicker and shorter, the feet a little bigger to support the weight of the clay above.

I used a wire for the inside the arms and I have to admit, I didn’t really think it through. The arms became a bit of a problem. The weight of the clay on the wire caused the arms to want to settle in a position other than what I wanted. I used half a toothpick to secure the right hand to the body to solve that problem.

As the clay dried, I had the same problem with cracking around the head that I did with Karen Lou Who. But I also had cracking in the shoulder area.

Of course,  the wooden skewer held the head in place, and the wire held the arm together. So after the sculpture dried, it was an easy fix to add some wet clay in the cracks and let it dry.

Then it was time to paint…

I was really coming together at this point…but I still needed my glasses. Luckily I had some thin wire kicking around. I bent the wire into shape and glued on the lenses. I wasn’t very confident that the glue would hold, so I added some clear acrylic gel to help hold the lenses to the wire. Unfortunately, the glasses aren’t as clear as I would have liked, but I couldn’t complain.

Finally I added the glasses to the painted sculpture…

The final addition was the champagne glass…for both my character and Karen Lou Who.