Alright, let me tell you about this “picese man” adventure I got myself into. It wasn’t some grand plan, you know? Just one of those weekends where you’re poking around, thinking, “I should make something.” And bam, this idea pops into my head. A “picese man.” Don’t ask me why, it just sounded like a thing I needed to try.
Getting Started, or So I Thought
So, first things first, I had to figure out what this dude would even look like. I’m thinking, okay, “picese,” so kinda fishy, but still a man. I sketched out a few rough ideas. Most of them looked like something that crawled out of a swamp, and not in a cool way. But I picked one that seemed, well, achievable. Famous last words, right?
Then I gathered my supplies. I had some old modeling clay I found in a box. Probably ancient. And some paints that were a bit crusty. I figured, “Eh, good enough.” I wasn’t aiming for a museum piece, just something to mess around with.
The Actual Mess-Making Process
This is where it got fun. And by fun, I mean frustrating.
I started trying to shape this clay. It was either too dry and crumbly, or if I added water, it turned into sticky goo. My hands were caked in this grey stuff. Looked like I’d been wrestling a cement mixer. I spent a good hour just trying to get a basic torso shape that didn’t immediately sag or crack.
- First, the head kept falling off. Glued it. Fell off again.
- Then, I tried to make some fish-like scales. They looked more like weird blobs.
- The arms? Oh boy. One was thicker than the other, and no matter how much I pinched and prodded, they just looked…wrong.
I remember thinking, this is worse than that time I tried to assemble flat-pack furniture with instructions only in Swedish. At least then, I had pictures. Here, I was just winging it, and the winging was not going well.
After a while, I let the clay disaster dry a bit. Or, well, I hoped it would dry. It mostly just got hard in some places and stayed weirdly damp in others. But I was committed, or maybe just stubborn. So, I moved on to painting.
A Splash of Color, A Dash of Despair
The paints, as I mentioned, were not exactly top quality. Some were watery, others thick as tar. I was going for a kind of aquatic blue-green. What I got was a splotchy mess that looked like my “picese man” had a nasty skin condition. The paint wouldn’t stick properly to the weirdly textured clay. It beaded up in some spots and soaked in like a sponge in others.
Seriously, at one point, I just sat there staring at it. This lumpy, unevenly colored… thing. It wasn’t majestic. It wasn’t even vaguely “picese.” It was just sad. It reminded me of this one project at my old job, everyone had a different idea of what it should be, and in the end, it was just a camel – a horse designed by a committee, you know?
Trying to Salvage the Situation
I wasn’t ready to give up completely. I thought, “Okay, new plan.” I grabbed some sandpaper – a very fine grit – and tried to smooth out the roughest clay parts. This created a lot of dust and didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. Then I decided to go really abstract with the paint. Forget realism. I started dabbing on different colors, trying to make it look “artsy.”
I even tried to add some fins made out of cardboard, painted silver. That was another struggle, getting them to stick to the lumpy body. A lot of glue was involved. A LOT. My fingers were stuck together more than the fins were stuck to the “picese man.”
The Grand Finale? Not Quite.
So, after a couple of days wrestling with this thing, what did I end up with? Well, it’s definitely a “man.” And it’s definitely… unique. It doesn’t look much like my original sketch, that’s for sure. It’s got character, I’ll give it that. The kind of character that makes you tilt your head and go, “Huh.”
It’s now sitting on a shelf. My “picese man.” It’s a reminder that sometimes, the process is the whole point, even if the result makes you laugh or scratch your head. I learned a lot about what not to do with old clay and crusty paints. And I guess I got it out of my system. For now, anyway. Who knows what weird project I’ll dream up next weekend?
