A New Kodama Tree

Here is another one of my sculptures inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki masterpiece Princess Mononoke.

This is the second Kodama tree I have made. The design was inspired by this still from the movie:

image credit http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Mononoke_Kodama.jpg

The Kodama are tree spirits who appear throughout the film. They are cute, mysterious, almost creepy, and definitely memorable. Here are some of the little  tree spirits with the titular princess:

Image credit: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ANRZUkgG--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/18zpd6qkonp5vjpg.jpg

This piece was completed on March 19, 2015. The armature is aluminum wire in wood, bulked up with Reynold’s Free Form Sculpt epoxy clay:

Over the epoxy, I affixed a skin of Sculpey III. This time, I made the leafy portions of the tree separately- you can see them in this picture:

I didn’t get a picture of this step, but to make the leaves I use a teardrop-shaped extruder and razor cut a long extruded piece into the leaf shapes. The extruded clay is the green snake you can see in the pictures. I baked the trunk and the leafy tops separately, and then affixed the leaves to the trunk using more of the epoxy clay. You can see my state of the art gluing rig in this photo:

Post-its and Perrer for the win!

After the epoxy cured, I put more Sculpey over the epoxy, then filled in more Sculpey leaves and baked it all again. After baking, I painted the eyes, gave it a wash, and sprayed it 4x with PYM II, an excellent polymer-safe aerosol varnish. 

Overall I am very happy with this piece. I think I will make another- do you think it would look nice in a pot, similar to a bonsai tree?