When she started with polymer, she had no experience at all. Following tutorials and techniques on social media or Youtube improved her basic skills. Then she took a chance to take a sculpting class with professionals.
Nowadays, Katesara Wongchukaew, a self-taught 23-year-old freelance sculptor based in Thailand, creates beautiful, part magical, part realistic fantasy sculptures out of polymer clay.
There is still much to learn when working with this medium, as she admits. “Working with professionals taught me a real cycle of the working process and brought my skills to the upper level. However, I still need to learn more and practice a lot to be better at this.” She appreciates the ability to control the solidity of the clay through the temperature. It allows her to apply various techniques (shaping, layering, texturing,...) at different hardness levels. Additionally, it gives her time to work with the details despite the hours.
Katesara herself defines her style as magic realism. “I love to sculpt the realistic human body, but I also give it a sense of fantasy features. I often use the elements of nature to create or adapt the design,” she says.
The human sculpture with flowers was her first fantasy sculpture and anatomy study, and she named it “The passion.” She chose the flower pattern painted on the human skin to simulate the ceramic texture and used freehand techniques to let herself express her feelings and design her own patterns. “I want it to represent the beauty and fragility of humans. In another way, I intend to make the human body look like a vase that contains a passionate state of mind. I decided to symbolize the mind's growth with a flower that eventually bloomed on the top of the body. It could be interpreted as my self-actualization,” she describes her work in detail. Also, the flower she chose for the sculpture is a distinctive element of her artwork, the yellow iris, means passion. Her work is thus not only elaborate in detail but perfectly thought out as well.
Katesara usually mixes her own color palette that suits each artwork. Now she uses only neutral colors (brown, white, black) and primary colors (red, blue, yellow) for brush and airbrush painting. “It was fun when I mixed them and played around to experiment with the tones and choose the atmosphere for my creatures,” she states and, at the same time, adds that it can be time-consuming when she wants to paint at a fast pace but needs to remix her colors every time.
