DIY Dymkovo toy: master class on making clay crafts

Souvenirs from the settlement of Dymkovo are clay sculptures familiar to many from childhood with their characteristic whitewashing and bright painting. A Dymkovo toy can be made with your own hands according to our step-by-step instructions given in this article, also about preparing the necessary material and choosing a suitable tool.

Once upon a time, peasants themselves took out red clay from the river bottom, chopped it with a shovel and even kneaded it with their feet to make it softer. Today, clay can be bought in the store, as well as brushes for painting and suitable paints. And step-by-step master classes will help you correctly make an ancient Russian toy.

When the toy is already dry...

The fact that the toy has dried will be clear from the color - the clay will become light. Now the toy can be sent to the stove or oven, where it will be fired. After this, the toy is whitewashed (simple waterproof paint that does not contain varnish will do). The whitewash must be applied in two layers, and after that, begin painting with tempera paint. The ornaments of the Dymkovo toy are circles, diamonds, rings, multi-colored stripes. By the way, the ornaments of ladies and young ladies are different: city dwellers often paint themselves with circles, while peasant women’s aprons and skirts are decorated in a more formal checkered or striped pattern.

Lady or young lady?

You can make the figure of a Dymkovo young lady with your own hands according to the same principle by which a young lady is made. They differ from each other in their headdresses: if we sculpt a kokoshnik for a peasant woman, then a city woman may well be wearing a hat. When sculpting, the basis of a headdress can be a small pancake (made of clay or salt dough), which is then placed on the head of the toy. To make the hat more impressive, add a flower or an interesting frill to it. In the hands of a young lady - unlike a lady - there may be a handbag, a flower or even a fan.

Progress of the lesson:

Parents and children enter, the teacher invites them to sit on chairs placed in a circle in the center of the group.

Educator: Hello, our dear children! Hello, our dear parents! I am very glad to see you in our group! Today we have an exciting activity ahead of us. Very interesting and equally useful.

But first, listen to my story.

– From the high bank of the Vyatka River, on which the city of Vyatka stands, you can see the village of Dymkovo. Why is it called that? In the old days - both in winter, when the stoves were lit, and in summer, when there was fog, this village seemed to be shrouded in haze, everything was in smoke. Here, in ancient times, a toy was born, which was called “Dymkovo”. (Slide show)

In the beginning there were whistles. All winter, the women of Dymkovo sculpted them for the fair. From a small clay ball with holes, the whistle turned into a duck, then into a cockerel, then into a skate. And now on the trays and counters of the crowded spring fair they sell cheerful goods. Adults and children willingly take it apart. The people's festivities are noisy, but the loudest sound is the loud whistle. That is why this spring holiday got its name - “Whistling”. A new winter comes, and again in Dymkovo they get down to business. And so on for many, many years. Grandmothers teach their granddaughters, and granddaughters teach their granddaughters.

And in our time, in Vyatka, which is now called Kirov, there are workshops of the famous Dymkovo toys. If we go into these workshops, we will immediately see piles and bags of clay, boxes of paints, boxes of eggs. All this is needed to create a miracle. Fairy-tale horses, turkeys that look like firebirds, sheep in pants, ladies and gentlemen, carousels, all this is a real miracle.

- And now we will imagine that we have turned into real Dymkovo craftswomen! And who we will sculpt, you tell me yourself.

The teacher reads the story “The Horse” by K. D. Ushinsky

The horse snores, curls his ears, moves his eyes, gnaws at the bit, bends his neck like a swan, digs the ground with his hoof. The mane is in a wave around the neck, the tail is a pipe at the back, there are bangs between the ears, and a brush on the legs; the wool shines silver. There is a bit in the mouth, a saddle on the back, golden stirrups, steel horseshoes.

- Sit down and go! To distant lands, to the thirtieth kingdom! The horse runs, the ground trembles, foam comes out of the mouth, steam comes out of the nostrils.

- Now you and I will sculpt horses so that they are just as beautiful: “the neck is bent like swans, the tail is like a pipe, the mane is like a wave along the neck.” The teacher invites the children to look again at the Dymkovo horse toy and determine the best way to make it. He clarifies the answers and advises trying to sculpt a horse the way folk craftsmen do.

— First you need to create the initial cylinder shape. We cut one end of the roller about a third of the length with a stack, pull off the resulting parts and make a neck with a head from one part, and legs from the other. We lift the neck up, bend it a little to form a head. We make the legs from another part: we cut the stack into two equal parts, each of which is pulled back and rounded. We stretch the other end of the roller slightly so that the hind legs are the same length as the front ones.

The teacher invites children and parents to complete the figurine so that it turns out to be a beautiful horse.

- Let's decorate the sculpted figurine so that it becomes a beautiful horse. We look at it from all sides and smooth it out. The mane and tail are slightly pulled back and pinched. You can complicate the details by sculpting them separately; roll up flagella and rollers and weave a tail and mane out of them.

-And at home you will decorate the horse with beautiful patterns.

The most cozy style of Christmas tree outfit

In modern times, the handmade style in decorating a holiday tree is becoming increasingly popular. This is not surprising, because the New Year is a family holiday, which should bring peace and comfort to the house, unite families together, and such an important detail as a Christmas tree greatly contributes to creating the right atmosphere in the house.

In addition, pre-New Year preparations are a great opportunity to spend time with your family and children, captivate them with the process of creating New Year's toys with your own hands and then decorating the tree together. How to decorate a Christmas tree for the New Year in 2022 by making decorations with your own hands?

There can be a huge number of ideas for this. Perhaps you have a hobby that will help you make interesting handmade Christmas tree decorations. Sewing and knitting are the most common ways to make toys, but other unusual methods can also be used.

Do-it-yourself edible decorations will be one of the most enjoyable ways to decorate a holiday tree for a child, because it is not only entertaining and beautiful, but also delicious.

Small gingerbread cookies of various shapes, covered with brightly colored confectionery glaze, candies in shiny wrappers, chocolate - all this will help you decorate the tree in an unusual way, just do not forget that chocolate, additionally heated by New Year's garlands, tends to melt quickly. Therefore, a tree decorated in this way is unlikely to stay with you throughout the holidays.

Gifts of nature

You can start preparing for the holiday in advance, from the beginning of the year, by collecting any items with which you will later decorate the tree. These can be dried fruits, shells, pine cones, flowers from the herbarium, which need to be coated with varnish and glitter before the holiday.

You can make very beautiful and unusual New Year's toys with your own hands from natural materials.

Your hobby

Collecting is another hobby that can help you create an unusual outfit for a coniferous beauty. If you collect any items - stamps, coins, badges, then you can use them in decorating your holiday interior.

Clay horse

Your hobby

Young lady

Such figures are made from a plastic bottle and plasticine, but this will be nothing more than an imitation of the Dymkovo lady. Alternatively, you can use salt dough instead of clay.

Dymkovo toy - sculpting a young lady in stages:

Roll out a pancake from clay and make a bell skirt out of it. This is a simplified action. In principle, the plastic basis for all female images was a mortar-bell, a base with a fluffy skirt.
Make sausages for the heroine's arms, attach them to the sculpted body, and the body to the bell skirt.
Roll up a ball head, attach a kokoshnik to it, attach the head with the kokoshnik to the body.
All parts are carefully connected, the fastening points are smoothed.
The figure should be decorated with thick braids and frills on the dress.
We leave the young lady to dry. When the clay brightens, we send the toy to be fired in the oven (for a couple of hours).
We whiten the figurine with white acrylic, and after it dries, we paint it according to the pattern we like.

This video clearly shows all the stages of making a Dymkovo young lady.

We pay attention to typical, canonical examples of painting - the face is deliberately primitively painted, the facial features are conventional.

Dymkovo toy - painted horse

We will need the usual materials for modeling:

clay;
oilcloth;
wet cloth;
stacks;
paints.

Set of tools

So, let's start sculpting our craft - “Clay Horse”.

Step 1. Roll out a small thick sausage 6-7 cm long. Flatten it slightly onto the oilcloth. We make cuts on both sides with a stack, as shown in the figure.

Making a blank for the body

Step 2. Take the sausage and bend it into an arc. We separate the ends of the sausage - after cutting there are two of them on each side of the sausage - and put the sausage on its “legs”. We shape them a little and align them. This will be the body of the horse. In general, the Dymkovo horse was made from separate parts, but we have children's creativity and therefore we simplify the shape of the toy.

Forming the body of the figure

Step 3. Roll out the sausage to approximately the same length as in Step 1, only one and a half times thinner. There is no need to pinch it. Bend one end of it perpendicular to the main part of the sausage, forming the horse's head.

Making the neck and head

Step 4. We show the child a sculpting technique - “pinching”: with our fingers we flatten one side of the sausage, forming the horse’s mane.

“Pinch” the horse’s mane

Step 5. We glue the resulting upper part of the horse to the body. To prevent it from falling off after drying, dip your fingers in water and “smear” the joints of the parts of the craft.

We sculpt the head to the body

Step 6. In the same way, only without bending one end of the sausage, we make the horse’s tail.

Making the tail with pinches

Step 7. “Apply” the tail to the horse. Here's what we got:

Horse figurine

Step 8. Prime the horse with white paint. The real Dymkovo toy was painted white with a special mixture of milk and chalk powder, but in the children's modeling workshop we will do this using ordinary gouache. We wait for the toy to dry and paint it together with the baby. Show him the techniques of Dymkovo painting - dotted spots, straight lines, etc. By coming up with a coloring scheme for a Dymkovo toy, your child develops creatively, expanding the color boundaries of his worldview. This is the kind of horse you will get:

horse

Making toys for children with your own hands is a real pleasure! Do you agree? The clay horse can be accompanied by these easy-to-make dolls and woolen toys, children's New Year's crafts, and figurines made from salt dough. Using the same principle, you can create a fairy-tale goat for a lamp in a nursery.

Create with your children and develop the talents that kids have had since childhood. This will allow them to look at the world more broadly and make it a little more beautiful.

How we made clay horses

I lay there, bored, and did not dry out, as it was neatly packed in a plastic bag (so that the moisture did not evaporate). And his time has come, a kind of hour of glory.

The children and I decided to make horses out of clay. Firstly, the New Year of the Horse is upon us; secondly, painted clay horses can perfectly convey the time when the Sorochinsky fair was buzzing and inviting everyone in wreaths, trousers and other national attributes.

It's decided! Let's make clay horses!

( clay taken from the bag)

We prepared a workplace - boards for modeling; toothpicks to make holes; plasticine stacks for small parts.

We placed bowls of water to wet our hands and clay as we worked. Water will prevent small cracks from appearing in the clay; with wet fingers you can make the surface of the product smooth.

We are preparing clay for the future horse. It can be sculpted in 2 ways: 1) from a single piece of clay, when the parts are “pulled out” and molded from the main part; 2) from separate pieces, proportional in size to future parts.

We ended up with a mixed method - the head and neck were from one piece of clay, and the body, legs, and tail were from separate pieces.

I would really like to demonstrate a master class with step-by-step photographs, but my hands were covered in clay, so it will just be creativity ;).

We divide a piece of clay into parts: a large piece for the body, smaller ones for the neck and head, 4 identical pieces for the legs, 1 for the tail.

Clay is a plastic, pleasant material for creativity. Working with him is a pleasure, like clay is alive. When working with plasticine, it’s a completely different feeling.

We sculpt the neck and head. We attach it with the body. We fasten the parts together well so that later our clay horse does not fall apart.

We make the legs for the horse in the following way: we roll out “sausages” (or make an arc from 2 pieces), attach them to the body.

We make the tail of the horse in any shape you want.

We sculpt a mane from pieces of clay. attach with the neck. We sculpt ears.

The horse's eyes can be made from small balls of clay or in the form of holes made with a toothpick. Using a toothpick we also make the nostrils.

We smooth out all the joints and level all surfaces with wet fingers.

These are the clay horses we made.

(Anina's clay horse)

(Artem's clay horse)

(Mom's creativity)

We set our horses to dry (since we will not bake them in the oven - there are no suitable conditions, the clay products will take about a week to dry).

A week has passed. The horses became lighter and lighter (the water evaporated).

Now the surface of the horses needs to be thoroughly cleaned with fine sandpaper. You just need to act carefully, since the horses are quite fragile (we didn’t bake them in the oven).

Coloring clay horses

Preparing paint for the base. It could be white gouache. We use water-dispersed (acrylic) paint for interior construction work. Quote:

Acrylic paints, like other water-dispersed paints, can be diluted with water; when diluted, they can be tinted with aqueous pigment pastes, but after drying they become resistant to water.

One horse will be light pink, the other will be light green, the third will be beige (we added color to the paint).

We completely cover the entire clay horse with paint.

Let it dry for a while.

We paint the dried clay horses with paints - gouache, watercolors. Don’t limit your children’s imagination, let them draw the way they want.

We got these wonderful clay horses.

After drying, the finished horses can be varnished.

Useful tips for beginners

If you want to learn the technique, then when creating a figurine you should have before your eyes the photograph of such a Dymkovo toy. Such a model is especially important for a child: you need to remember that the baby does not have much life experience. If you want to decorate the finished toy with beautiful details and paintings, you must first do them on paper.

By combining circles and stripes, you can achieve a wide variety of interesting colors. The main thing is to choose the right color. Blue, yellow, red, green and orange are the main colors that were traditionally used when coloring Dymkovo toys. If desired, during painting you can also use pink or orange paint, and highlight individual elements with gold. You also need to remember that you don’t need to carefully draw the face, just outline it a little.

In Dymkovo toys it is customary to use special symbols that characterize beauty, healthy life and sincerity. All patterns in traditional toys were symbolic, associated with nature, as well as various amulets. For example, a ring is a talisman, a circle with intersecting stripes are solar signs.

Dots inside the circle or alternating dots and circles are signs of embryos and seeds, one stripe is a road or river, black dots are traces of a person

It is very important to know the meaning of the color of the toy. The color green is popularly associated with the concept of long life and symbolizes arable land, earth and nature.

White color has always been a symbol of truth, goodness and moral purity. The color red is not only a characteristic sign of fire, but also of beauty, glory, good health and strength. Blue is the sky.

The Dymkovo toy will be a truly unique and amazing handmade gift. This fake will bring a lot of pleasure not only to you, but also to your children.

Originally posted 2018-03-19 08:48:31.

Materials for creativity at home

Making Dymkovo toys at home is a good idea for children to create together with their parents. Plasticine is considered the most accessible and cheapest material. To create figures according to the traditions of the village of Dymkovo, it would be more logical to use white material. But since plasticine is usually sold in whole sets, which include a large number of colors, you can mix them together and sculpt beautiful figures from them.

The finished figure is usually coated with a primer; only after it has dried can you begin painting. In the traditional method of creation, the toy is not varnished, but is left with a matte structure. If you use unstable paints when creating, it makes sense to secure them additionally.

Preparing material and tools for creativity

Dymkovo toy from the 19th century.
The sculpting process is always manual labor, and it is impossible to sculpt two identical cockerels or young ladies. Every time you get a truly exclusive souvenir. But to make it according to Dymkovo traditions, you need to prepare tools and, of course, material.

You will need:

natural clay (sold in briquettes in craft supply stores);
stacks;
comfortable mat for modeling;
modeling board;
a jar of water;
brush;
plastic bag;
wet towel;
whitewash (you can take regular waterproof paint without varnish);
paint for painting (ideally tempera, but acrylic will also work).

After kiln firing, the workpiece will be red-brown. Previously, a chalk-milk solution was used for whitewashing: the master dipped the entire toy into it. On the surface, the milk soured, causing a bright film of casein glue to form on the souvenir.

Today, artists whitewash the toy with tempera white. But if you want to follow traditions, you can dip the product in chalk crushed in milk.

The ancient method of painting is also somewhat different from the modern one. Craftsmen ground dry paints with eggs, adding vinegar or peroxided kvass to the composition. In the 20th century, works were painted mainly with gouache, which was also painted on eggs. Today, craftsmen prefer to use durable acrylic paints.

Let's sculpt a horse

Another common Dymkovo figurine (perhaps no less common than the Dymkovo young lady) is a horse. First of all, from the material chosen for work, we sculpt the torso, then the cones of the legs, as well as the head with a mane and a small tail.

All parts are combined into a single whole and glued together. The toy is sent to dry, which will also be followed by baking in the oven, whitewashing and painting.

Modeling is one of the types of artistic creativity. In kindergarten, school, art clubs, and just for fun, children and adults engage in modeling in their free time. The easiest way to sculpt is from plasticine.

The material is available in all stores, it is soft and plastic, it is easy to fashion an object of any shape from it. You can always take an old work and fashion a new artistic creation from a used piece.

The horse is a beautiful animal with a proudly arched neck, flowing mane, large body and thin strong legs. It is difficult to sculpt a horse in all its glory. More often they sculpt a stylized horse, reminiscent of folk toys.

The master class is intended for teaching sculpting to children in the preparatory group or in grades 1-2 at school. It will be useful for kindergarten teachers.

This activity continues to teach children how to sculpt animals, develops in children a sense of beauty, artistic taste, imaginative thinking, and trains fingers and fine motor skills. It also fosters a love for animals, teaches you to analyze: what a horse looks like, what parts a horse figurine consists of, how to sculpt a horse step by step.

Popular articles Quantum Nuka Cola from Fallout 3

During the lesson, we repeat counting and geometric shapes with the children and correlate them with the shape of individual parts of the horse’s figure.

For sculpting you need the following materials:

plasticine;
modeling board;
stack.

Before the start of the lesson, the leader reviews photos and drawings of horses

, while clarifying that the horse consists of an oblong body, a long curved neck with a small oval head. The horse's legs are long and cone-shaped. Long thick mane and tail.

To make it easier for children to work with plasticine, it should be kept in a warm room before class.

How to sculpt a horse:

A beautiful horse made of plasticine. Together with the children we admire the results of their work.

Using white, orange and black plasticine, you can make a plasticine horse that looks like the horse with apples from the cartoon.

Prepare for work

plasticine of the desired color, stacks, board for work.

How to make a horse:

Sculpting a unicorn and a zebra

White plasticine horses

They look beautiful and elegant, especially with decorations made of colored plasticine. You can mold a colored blanket, harness, or saddle onto a horse.

Using white plasticine, using the above master class, you can make a unicorn or zebra.

According to legend, the unicorn has a multi-colored tail and mane, and a long multi-colored sharp horn on its face. To make a unicorn

, you need to take a large piece of white plasticine and a little of different colors.

We sculpt a figure from white plasticine as for a white horse: we also make ears, eyes, nostrils, and a mouth. From colored plasticine we roll out many thin sausages for the mane and tail. You can adapt a garlic press and use it to make sausages. We beautifully decorate the lush, long multi-colored mane and tail.

Unicorn horn

You can make it in the form of a cone from multi-colored plasticine, attach a star made of foil to the tip, or make the entire horn from shiny foil.

zebra

easy to mold from white plasticine with black stripes. Make it like a horse, stick strips of black sausages on a white back. The short mane and tail are also black. On the face there is a black nose, and the legs end in black hooves.

How to make a Dymkovo horse from plasticine

Dymkovo horses

They are made from clay and painted with various patterns: dots, circles, mesh.

You can make a horse from white and colored plasticine, the same as the Dymkovo horse:

The plasticine horse is ready, it can be painted with water-based paints in the style of Dymkovo patterns.

In the old days, every city and large village on the territory of our homeland had its own craft, and in some cases even several. Having come up with an unusual method for producing a high-quality product in large quantities, the artisans continued to keep their secrets secret and passed them on to their children. Some ancient crafts continue to exist in our time.

How to make a horse out of clay?

Surely everyone who is interested in artistic fakes is interested in how to make a horse with your own hands. Let's look at how to make a horse .

Before starting work, it is necessary to determine its front: color, quantity, size of the horse. It is necessary to clarify which horse needs to be molded. For example, it may be a fairy-tale pony, or a mystical Pegasus, or it may be necessary to make a classic stallion. All this needs to be asked from the person to whom this clay fake will be intended.

Now that there are no questions about what exactly will be the result of the work, you need to take a block of clay prepared for the work and divide it into 9 different parts by size. They will be needed to make: the head, neck, legs, body and ears.

It is necessary not to forget about one very important, albeit small detail, if we talk about how to make a horse out of clay with your own hands. The front legs of this animal bend forward, but the hind legs, on the contrary, bend back. Although, if the fake is not intended for exhibitions or collections, this detail can be ignored at all, and they can be made straight.

Before you start sculpting, you need to knead the clay well so that it is homogeneous and viscous, but not sticky. Each element of the future horse must first be rolled into a ball, and only then it must be given the necessary shape for each specific part of the animal’s body.

After all the individual parts of the horse’s body are ready and lying in front of your eyes, they need to begin to be connected to each other. Perhaps this is the most important stage of the instructions on how to mold a horse from clay, since the durability of the future product depends on the quality of the connection.

Clay products need to be fastened together in the same way as plasticine ones, as if heating and smoothing the joints. Only after the layout has been completely assembled should you think about the smaller details, like the mane, eyes, nose, mouth, hooves and the like. For this job you will need stacks.

It is fashionable to use auxiliary materials to make eyes from beads, a mane and eyebrows from straw. But all this needs to be glued with PVA glue only after the finished horse figure has been fired. Firing must be carried out gradually, in two stages. At the first stage, the moisture will evaporate from the product, and at the second it will be hardened and gain strength.

The history of the origin of the Dymkovo toy

Clay is a special material that is distinguished by its plasticity in its raw form, and it also acquires high strength after firing. Due to these characteristics of the material, clay products have been widely popular from ancient times to the present day. In ancient times, dishes and clay figurines were created in almost every region of our homeland.

Moreover, each locality had its own figure shapes, author’s traditions of decorating and painting the resulting toys. The village of Dymkovo (Kirov region) became known throughout the country for its skilled craftsmen who created small, bright toys that made different sounds. It is curious that the traditional toy was made not to entertain children, but to protect one’s home from evil spirits.

In the old days they thought that evil spirits were very afraid of loud sounds. It is for this reason that in those days all toys could whistle, rattle and make sounds. They were traditionally created for the festival of Pandemonium, during which people drove out evil spirits and had fun with the whole village.

Features of toys from masters

Today, in the village of Dymkovo itself, you can find not only rattles and whistles, but also simple toys in the form of figurines that cannot make any loud sounds. The main feature of this product is its relatively small size. Craftsmen who remain faithful to ancient traditions most often make figurines of birds (turkeys), animals (deer), young ladies, and in some cases, men.

However, you can also find products that are more complex in shape: women holding a loaf of bread in their hand, or good fellows riding a beautiful horse. A simple pattern and a small number of colors when painting the structure are what distinguishes the toy for the most part.

You can create a horse from plasticine with your own hands in the style of such a folk craft. This is done quite easily: the shape of the figurine should be distinguished by its simplicity in execution, and simple dots and lines are used to paint the finished product. It is worth noting that in traditional creation the background must be white, but today you can very often find toys that are painted in different colors.

We sculpt a lady using the Dymkovo technique

Craftsmen from the village of Dymkovo have been making figurines of women since ancient times. Among them there are real ladies in kokoshniks, and simple peasant women with children in their arms or buckets on rocker arms. Despite the variety of decorative options, all female figures have a fairly simple shape, thanks to which you can immediately understand that this is a Dymkovo toy. How to make a lady from plasticine? For a full skirt you will need a frame - it is convenient to take the cut off neck of a plastic bottle. Cover it with a thin layer of plasticine, maintaining its shape. Then, based on the bottle cap, form a body and attach a ball-head to it. Next, you can give free rein to your imagination - sculpt your hands, hair and headdress. You can add some other decor, give the young lady something in her hands. Cover the finished figurine with primer and paint.

If the topic of your creative activity today is a Dymkovo plasticine toy, a photo of the finished figurine or even the figurine itself as a sample should always be before your eyes

It is especially important to have a role model for children; do not forget that children do not have much life experience. If you want to decorate the finished toy with complex patterns, be sure to try making them on paper

In fact, by combining circles and stripes you can achieve various and interesting effects, the main thing is to choose the right colors. Red, yellow, blue, green, orange - all these are the colors in which the Dymkovo toy is traditionally painted. You already know how to make such a figurine from plasticine at home. If desired, you can also use orange or pink paint during the painting process, and highlight individual elements with gilding. Don’t forget that you don’t need to carefully draw the face; just outline it schematically.

how to make a sheep with your own hands

These adhesives are clear and stick well. Again, the brand of glue is not important, use the one that you like and suits.

Woolen thread will be needed for the final wrapping of the body and making the sheep's wool. The appearance of the sheep depends entirely on which thread you choose.

First of all, you need to give the head the desired shape.

Then we pierce it with wire, which will be the neck and torso. We bend the end of the wire and secure it in the head. This way it won't turn.

We bend pairs of limbs from two identical pieces of wire.

This is how we solder the arms and legs to the body. If you don’t know how to solder, you can wrap it with wire, but this is less reliable and may dangle.

Next, having smeared the frame with glue, we wrap the required thickness of the neck and torso with twine. Secure the free end of the rope with superglue.

And now the most difficult part (especially if the sheep is white). We need to carefully wrap the head in one layer and without gaps. We start from the tip of the nose. We drip superglue. Glue the beginning of the thread. Then, in a spiral, spread a thin strip of superglue and wind the thread.

Gradually we reach approximately the middle. Then we do the same, starting from the top of the head. It’s unlikely to succeed the first time, so I recommend that you first practice on a similar head. It should look something like this:

Next we start wrapping the legs. It is necessary to bend the loops at the ends of the wire. Coat the wire with glue. And wrap tightly in one layer.

After this, bend the ends of the wire back. Again, apply glue on top of the thread and wind the legs to the desired thickness.

When all the limbs are wrapped, we wrap the torso, also first coating the base with glue.

We make the sheep's ears from paper clips. In the same way, first we coat the wire with glue, wrap it, give it the desired shape and, after coating it with glue, wrap it completely.

It is necessary to leave free ends of the wire in order to later secure the ears to the head. When the ears are ready, apply superglue to the ends of the wire and insert them into place.

Now we need to make wool for the sheep. This is the most labor-intensive work that takes the most time.

You will need a stationery knife, a needle with a thin thread, a woolen thread and a smooth plate about 1.5 cm wide. The length of the future wool depends on its width.

We wind several turns of wool thread onto the plate.

On one side we tighten it with a needle and a thin thread (I have it black for clarity, but you’d better take a thread that matches the color of the wool). You need to stitch it so that the thread does not unravel later.

You need a whole handful of such bunches to be enough for the whole sheep. When you have made the required number of blanks, you can start gluing them. We spread a drop of superglue where the bundle is wound with thread and glue it to the sheep.

Thus we glue it all over. The closer the tufts are to each other, the denser the wool will be.

The final touch remains. For the eyes you will need two pins with balls at the ends. First we paint them white. When the pins are dry, shorten them with wire cutters, leaving about a centimeter. Apply glue and insert into place. After that we draw the pupils.

So our handmade sheep is ready!

This master class is completely free and open access. Quoting and reprinting is not prohibited. When copying materials, please indicate the author and provide an active link to the source.

Dymkovo horse - molded from plasticine

Hello, fellow blog readers!

Today we are making a Dymkovo horse from plasticine. We have already sculpted a realistic horse, and we have also learned how to sculpt a plastic horse from life. But in our country we also have a rich tradition of making toys from clay. In the near future we will write about the folk craft itself - making Dymkovo toys. And to warm up, let's start with the horse. It is quite simple and we can easily make a figurine about the size of a palm (that is, about the same size as the prototype clay toys).

However, we will use plasticine as the material, so our craft can only be called “Dymkovo” only conditionally. The main thing for us in this case: formal similarity, which will give us the formal right to call the horse Dymkovo.

What is the form in accordance with the traditions of Dymkovo folk craft? Look at the image. The INTEGRITY of this image is pleasantly surprising. The shapes of these toys are alien to any geometricism; you will not see a single frankly straight line, not a single angle! The torso smoothly transitions into the limbs and head. I personally have an association with, say, ceramic dishes: the same smoothness and roundness. Although the stability of this horse also has something of a table or chair! The body, we note, is relatively short, the legs are thick, long and the front and back pairs are similar. (Remember that in a real horse, the front and rear pairs of legs are anatomically significantly different). The toy's croup is slightly lower than the withers, but everything is very smooth. The neck is powerful and long and, together with the head, resembles...a felt boot with ears. The tail and mane are made from plasticine strands twisted in half. Now you have captured the very essence of the Dymkovo toy, let's get down to business.

How will we sculpt?

I choose the method of drawing from one piece because the horse figurine looks very solid and monolithic.

But don’t forget to leave a little plasticine for the ears, tail and mane.

When the horse is ready, we will smooth its surface and give its muzzle a simple-minded expression (draw eyes and designate the nose), attach conical ears, a mane and a tail.

Here she is, a cute plasticine horse, standing on our table. Of course, it would be necessary to paint it with Dymkovo patterns, but plasticine will not work. We’ll decorate the coloring book with patterns - next time Subscribe to blog updates Handykids.ru - “Art” and “manual labor” for children by mail]

How to make a horse out of clay?

The first thing that modeling lessons in any school begin with is the creation of a horse figurine.

The very first thing you need to do is imagine the future horse in the form of geometric shapes. These are the simplest figures in geometry, such as a ball, rectangle, parallelepiped, and so on. It is very easy to imagine the future horse as follows: the body is an oval, the cylinder is the neck, the head is a ball, the legs are oval sausages. When rolling out these figures in your hands, the most important thing is not to forget about the proportions of the parts of the body. Even if your horse's figure is a little disproportionate, the disproportion should not be too noticeable. It is still necessary to observe certain proportions.

When thinking about how to make a horse out of clay, and not only a horse, the easiest way is to use the analogy of a constructor. By dividing a figure into geometric shapes and then connecting them. The only difference is that in this case, you create your own constructor, and connect it by means of sculpting and smearing.

Subsequent coating of the horse's body parts must be of high quality. It is important to try not to miss any cracks. Your fingers should feel the material; for this you should always keep a cloth soaked in water at hand. You need to periodically wipe your fingers on it in order to better feel the material and so that rough fingerprints do not remain on the figure.

At this stage of modeling you should have some kind of horse, still very rough, but vaguely reminiscent of it. After this, you need to move on to better smoothing of the figure. It is necessary to set some stylization for the horse, namely: turn of the head, placement of the legs, tilt of the neck. And don't forget to attach ears to it. Ears can be created by pinching the clay of the head, or you can prepare small conical figures and attach them.

A clay horse is probably the simplest figurine. That is why lessons on clay modeling practice begin with it. When you are done with smoothing out the elements of the horse's body, you need to move on to its details. The first step is to make a saddle for the horse. The small ball must first be flattened into a cake (very flat). And then you need to bend it to the shape of your horse’s body. It is impossible to attach the saddle to the horse, as it will be deformed, and this is of no use to us.

That's why we use PVA to secure the saddle to the horse. Let's spread a little PVA on the inside of the saddle and secure it to the horse as needed. After drying, it will stick firmly to the horse. At this stage the horse is ready. But some may think she looks too bald. In this case, you can also add a tail and mane to it.