The Mailman

Character clay handmade polymer clay sculpting sculpture toy design

You got mail.

📬

This Mailman is the original character of Byron, a college classmate, who does traditional watercolor and digital art over at byronjeffy.com. He reached out to me late last year, and I also asked permission if I could use his signature character for some sculpting tests (aka to give me leeway for imperfections 😅).

This is my third polymer clay sculpt - The Flora Trio were first, and the Mini Succulents second.

I used Super Sculpey for the figure, the beige semi-transparent one, and I used my leftover emerald Cernit for the backpack. Super Sculpey is kinder to the hands, Cernit takes a while (and a bit of oil) to soften but feels more durable post-bake.

Originally meant to be a mini figure, I overestimated making the armature and the figure ultimately stands at 16.5cm excluding the hat. The accessories are removable, the mailbox backpack is functional and can be opened to hold a few mini paper scrolls.

Mailman's creator Byron does traditional watercolor and drawing, and I wanted to translate the handmade/hand crafted quality to this figure by doing a rough sculpt+paint style, purposely leaving some lines and uneven bits on. Like how a traditional artist would sometimes leave sketch guidelines, giving a hint of how the process progressed from one stage to another, I left some edges and clay bits unsmoothed - you can see which parts I added after establishing a base. I added a bit of resin sand on the trousers and hat to add tactile texture, and dabs of complementary color for visual texture.

I wanted it to look gritty, painterly, uneven in an "artsy" way.

This was one fun project, I hope I was able to capture Byron's whimsical character in my own way.