There are a lot of books on how to make realistic looking flowers. I have a couple, and I'm working on that. However, I also want to make realistic looking other figures, too. I have a book of Alan Dunn's, where in addition to his flowers which are to die for, he has a little mouse that doesn't look cartoon-ish in the least. I've tried - couple of attempts, and mine look cartoonish. Well, the first mouse looked like a teddy bear. The second mouse is obviously a mouse, but looks like it belongs in a cartoon.

Does anyone know of any books/DVDs that could help me with this? I'm not in the position to take a class for the rest of 2010 between travelling with my job, and upcoming surgery on me, so I was hoping for a self-learning technique.

Thanks in advance................Kay

Sorry I don't have a good answer for you, but what I usually do is surround myself with pictures of what I want to duplicate from different angles. I've found that making figurines out of colored fondant works best for cartoony stuff, but when I want something realistic, I just make it in white fondant/gumpaste and then paint it later.

HTH!

You should definately Go for lorraine mcKays tutorials, Aine_2 , she has her own website . . Extra icing art i think it is, and she has AWesome tutorials for doing people x

I agree with Aine2's figure tutorials, but another resource I've found helpful is books on polymer clay sculpting. I have a couple books by Katherine Dewey and her stuff is very realistic and lifelike.

Thank you, everyone! I will try these references. Thanks again!

I did use white gumpaste, and color it later, but still looked like a cartoon.