Custom Bear Sculpture

UPDATE: Thank you to for requesting this piece for your group's gallery!

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A friend of mine (not on DeviantArt, or else I'd link to her profile if she had one) commissioned me to create a sculpture of a bear as a gift to her mother for her mom's birthday. According to my friend, her mom especially loves bears, so after much discussion of what kind of bear to create (my awesome friend was very specific about how she wanted this done), I proceeded to create the most realistic bear I could possibly pull off. Normally my stuff is pretty overly cutesy, and quite over-simplified, so going for a slightly more realistic (I know it's not strict realism--I'm not that skilled!) look than I am used to was a good and healthy challenge for me. Hopefully you can tell from the photos how detailed those tiny little bear's paws were. (Please click on the image or zoom in or "full view" to check out those paws.) Making the individual claws was murder--they were so minuscule and so sharp that the tips of some of them broke off during creation when I'd barely breathe on them. Thankfully, if you look at the paws of a real bear who's been alive for a while, their claws often look like they've seen better days as well, so I just tell myself it contributes to the "realistic" look.

I sculpted this sometime mid-2015, but am only now FINALLY getting around to uploading it. (I've had a number of other more pressing matters arise in life, art-related and otherwise, so getting around to assembling the photos into this collage was not high on my priority list.) The sculpture is approximately 3 inches from the tip of its nose to its backside. Aside from the tiny brown glass beads for the eyes (and, if I remember correctly, an inner armature) the bear was made almost entirely of coloured polymer clay, including those impossible little claws. Absolutely NO PAINT was used to create or colour this piece. So the fade from the darker brown to the lighter brown clay was carefully created by hand by me into the clay itself. As you'll notice, my signature is also discreetly carved into the bear's stomach.

Yes, the watermark is really in the way of the image. Wah, wah, boo-hoo. That's the point. Cry me a river.

I did more preliminary work for this sculpture than I've done for my previous commissions, which you may have already noticed if you've been "watching" me here on DeviantArt for a while. If you want to see the conceptual development of this work of art, please click the following links:

The original, rough concept sketches.
The cleaned-up line drawings of the original sketches.
The 100% traditionally drawn full-colour illustration of a sitting cinnamon bear design.
The 100% traditionally drawn full-colour illustration of a walking black bear design.

If you're interested in a print of this collage, or in prints of any of my images without the watermarks, please note me directly or comment below the image in which you are interested. If you buy prints directly through DeviantArt, they will still have my watermarks on them. And if you are interested in commissioning me for a piece of art of your own choosing, please contact me. While I may not be able to accept every request for commissions, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask!

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Soli Deo Gloria!