5 Exercises with Clay to Create Animal Details

Learn how to mold animal hands, eyes, and feet to add quirky features to your ceramic sculptures, with Nastia Calaca

With just a few details, you can transform your ceramics into pieces filled with personality. By playing with proportions, shapes, and detailing, you can bring your animal-shaped pottery to life.

Nastia Calaca (@nastiacalaca) is a Ukrainian ceramic artist based in the Netherlands with her own brand, Calaca Ceramic Art. Her whimsical anthropomorphic figurines are inspired by her own childhood memories, and have captured the hearts of people all over the world since 2016.

In this video, Nastia will teach you some exercises with clay that you can use to create your own quirky creatures.

Exercises with Clay to Create Animal Details

1. Toad or chameleon eyes

Roll a small piece of clay into a ball. When you are creating two, symmetrical pieces, for instance eyes or hands, try and make sure that the ball of clay is as even as possible. Cut it in the middle, and using a loop tool, scrape out the inside of the semicircle. Make an indentation on the semicircle as if it’s a closed eye. Put your finger inside the semicircle of clay and start pushing with your finger and “opening” the eye.

Roll a small piece of clay and put that inside the semicircle, pushing it through to make the eye stronger. With your spatula tool, begin giving shape and definition to the eye, revealing the eyeball inside. With the wooden tool, add extra details like wrinkles, under-eye bags, the pupil, and so on. Whenever your clay starts to become dry, wipe it with a brush and some water.

2. Toad or chameleon hands

Roll a small “sausage” of clay. This will serve as the palm of your toad or chameleon hand, and since it’s only a small hand, you don’t need much clay. Then roll four very small, mini carrot-shaped pieces of clay. These will be the fingers. Importantly, before sticking them directly onto your clay palm, you need to crosshatch the palm and each finger, and make sure the clay is wet. Then stick them together. Smooth over the hand with your fingers, and then with a wet brush.

3. Toad feet

Roll another small sausage. Curl it around your finger a little bit, and using the curved scraper, simply indent the toes into the clay. Then picking up your spatula, use it to give the toes a more realistic look, by further curving them and defining them.

4. Hippo feet

Take a thicker coil of clay and use the scraper tool to make the indentations for where the nails will be. Grab your spatula, and begin making those indentations into realistic looking nails.

5. Animal claw

Similarly to the toad feet, roll a piece of clay so that it is thinner at one end and slightly thicker at the other. Use the scraper and make some long, thin indentations which will be the claws. Picking up your spatula, curve the claws so they are more realistic and 3-dimensional.

Did you like this video? If you love Nastia’s quirky style and want to learn how to add character to clay, then check out her course Ceramic Character Design: Explore Color and Texture.

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