I’ll keep the fun going with two popular designs: “Eggs Benedict” and “Deviled Eggs”. Rather than being ‘ornamental’, they crave to be picked up, felt and looked at closely.
These two examples run with the idea that sticking boggly eyes on anything makes it cuter. They also both require ‘props’ to make them work.
Deviled Egg
There are a few components to this one, the most striking of which are the horns. You can make your horns long and slightly curved, like in the image, or dead straight, like the demon out of Dungeon Keeper, or curled like a ram’s horn, or whatever.
How to make them? Get some aluminium foil, pinch the top and twist it around itself, rolling it up to make a trumpet. Keep the pointy end pointy, and stamp out the other end to make it wide and flat. This will help glue it to your egg.
It’ll be a bit flimsy, and paint won’t want to stick to it, so here’s a trick: use impasto medium to coat it, add rigidity and allow your pigment to hold.
It works like goopy butter, and sets pretty hard, so you can build up and mould any kind of low lying structure, add texture or, as in this case, add firmness. You can buy impasto from any art or craft store, and it comes in handy.
While your horns are drying, paint your egg solid red. On the back I put purple blotches (not visible from the front) just to add a bit of contrast. Build up the bottom lip with impasto, and the same with the eyebrows.
Note that the position and size of the eyes is important: Small and wide looks ‘piggy-ish’ while large and close together looks ‘cute’.
Glue on the horn when everything is dry, two coats of lacquer with clear gloss acrylic and find a suitable egg cup to stick him in!
Eggs Benedict
Divide your egg into three, with the top being hair, the middle being skin and the bottom being clothing. Paint your skin first. Add some blush on the cheeks to break up the monotony.
While that’s drying, find a halo.
The one in the picture is from, well, do you remember CDs and DVDs (Yes, grandpa)? Do you remember buying spools of them? Do you remember the little spacer that sat on top of them to keep them from rattling around? One of them. Paint it gold or silver, several coats, then gloss that up.
Then, once dry, mix some pigment into some impasto to make the hair. Sculpt and drag you brush or spatula or iron wire to make a texture. Stick your halo on top. You can imbed it into the hair or, alternatively, use craft glue to hold it.
Mix white and silver or gold paint with a wee bit of impasto and slather it on. Use some muslin cloth and gently press and release to create a material effect. Coat again in the silver + white paint mix, leave to dry.
Add the eyes (closer together) and gloss up good.
Tada! Eggs Benedict!