Leprechaun - custom-made statue

Hi Steemians. You probably saw already this guy as my profile picture. It is Leprechaun I sculpted a while ago for the client. It is Irish character, type of fairy which is spending its time on mischief and have a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If captured by a human, they often grant three wishes in exchange for their freedom. Since I now live in Ireland and make custom figures, it was time to make this character.

I sculpted him in polymer clay produced by American company Sculpey. Its the type of clay, you can form and when you finish, you put it into an oven and bake at certain temperature for half an hour. When it cools down, it is hard and takes paint well. It is durable enough to be one of the kind statue. I used it to create my prototype for later molding and casting more copies of my hand made limited edition collectible. You can see first 3 copies ready for cleaning below.

This kind of model usually starts with the head. I started shaping it based on the image provided by the client. It was originally painted by https://www.instagram.com/illustratusmaximus/ for his client, and at the end, I got their positive review and permission to produce few pieces. One of them even bought copy no.2

It starts slowly, ugly and messy. I am adding clay to establish shapes and size. At this stage, it does not look good, but I have to have faith, patience, and trust that it will end well. Just like starting here on Steemit :)

Here are all the pieces separated and baked. I made keys which will help me glue them together. They require a little bit of sanding and few coats of primer to make them smooth and clean. Next stage is building 2 part silicone molds for each element separately. When I removed them from silicone, the originals sometimes crack. The molds were not affected by that so I could produce much more durable plastic parts by pouring 2 parts casting resin into the molds.

I used a set of parts to make another version for my friends and fans from the USA. I modified the hat and one hand changed the paint job and created this Uncle Sam one of the kind custom figure. I have few other customs in plans like Mad Hatter but there are other projects and of course the dayjob taking my precious time. What do you think? Do you like it? Do you see any other character I could make using parts of this sculpture? If you do, please comment below. If you want to see more of my work, I will post them gradually here. If you don't have a patience. visit my portfolio page http://themodelmaker.net
I appreciate all your support, comments and upvotes so I can make more objects like this in future. Thanks for your time! Hope you enjoyed seeing whats behind the scene.