Polymer Clay Fan

Free Sculpting Tutorials

Archive for October, 2009

Pumpkin Sculpting

Posted by goregt On October - 8 - 2009

Hey Gang, with Halloween fast approaching did you know that there is a really cool and great way to really impress your friends and family with your talent?. Although this website centers more around sculpting with polymer clay and wax, there are a lot of other types of materials that you can easily sculpt. Metal and wood seem obvious answers here but how about pumpkins. Can you think of any better way to spice up your Halloween this year than sculpting a really cool looking pumpkin?

Now I don’t want to be misleading here, sculpting pumpkins in very different than sculpting in wax or polymer clay. It’s kind of like sculpting with wood, the process is 100 percent a subtractive. You have to carve away the flesh of the pumpkin and any mistakes made could force you to reshape or even change your design. I know it sounds challenging but with a little practice it really is not that bad and most important of all it is a ton of fun! Read the rest of this entry »

Tribal Back – 5

Posted by goregt On October - 7 - 2009

Not a lot going on with this lesson but I thought I would give a look at the back from one more angle. The left side of the back is as far as I’m going to take it until I move forward with the right half of my back. I wouldn’t recommend sculpting a back this way because it can mess up the balance of the muscles in the piece. The best approach is the sculpt the entire form at once. The only reason why I broke it down into the shapes is because I wanted to show a contrast between the two halves. Read the rest of this entry »

Tribal Back – 4

Posted by goregt On October - 6 - 2009

The top half of my back still needs some work but I want to move on to the lower back to try and pull all the shapes together. I’m going to need to start working on the right half of the back pretty soon to make sure that all the shapes are coming together correctly. Once I sculpt the right half I should get a good idea if any of the individual shapes need to be reworked.

For this step I’m sculpting the muscles and skin folds that make up the lower back. Again using a loop too I carve out the areas individual muscles. If I carve away too much I can always go back and add little bits of clay here and there but since the lower back already has too much clay I can carve away the shapes for the folds of skin (and muscles). Read the rest of this entry »

Tribal Back – 3

Posted by goregt On October - 5 - 2009

Step three in this tutorial builds on the first two steps that we used to sculpt the back. I continue to build out the individual forms by adding and removing clay to mimic the shapes in my resource material.

For this sculpture I am sculpting the details on the left side of the back first and then will move to the right side. I’m only doing it this way because it is a little easier to create a tutorial using this method. If I was just sculpting this without trying to document the process I would sculpt both side of the back at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Great Classroom Projects With Free Art Lesson Plans

Posted by goregt On October - 3 - 2009

We know how difficult it is to come up with new and yet inexpensive ideas for classroom art projects. Our staff is always on the alert for great new ideas (if you have any, let us know! We are always adding to our library of free downloadable lesson plans). Our art lesson plans are either in PDF format or PowerPoint presentations, and they can be downloaded absolutely free. For elementary school students there are easy-to-follow explanations of lithography; portrait sculpture in clay; dinosaur bone clay relief sculpture; polymer clay bead making; prehistoric cave art; and even making clay skulls to celebrate Mexico’s Day of the Dead. For high school students there are more advanced art projects such as multi-color printing; sculpting insects with polymer clay; relief sculpture; making reproductions of Chinese vessels in bronze; sculpting life sized heads and ceramic self-portraits. There is also an Introduction to Glass in the Classroom; making fused and slumped warm glass objects d’art; glass casting; and glass jewelry making. Read the rest of this entry »

Tribal Back – 2

Posted by goregt On October - 1 - 2009

In the last tutorial I briefly went over how I like to draw out a rough outline of the different muscles. I use this trick on quite a few places on the body and it really helps be understand and build out the individual shapes. For example, I like to draw out the individual muscles when I sculpt muscular arms and very lean abs. The back also has a lot going on so even though my outline is pretty rough it still helps me break down the back into the individual muscles (or shapes).

The first step is to separate my back into two halves. Now you can’t just simply carve a line down the center of the back, otherwise your sculpture will look like it has a canon going down the center of it. To make the back look more natural I will blend the two halves of the large back muscles (latissimus dorsi) into the area of where the spine is located. This task is easily accomplished by carving the center edges of the back until it gently slopes to the spine. I keep working both halves of the back until I get a look that I am happy with. Read the rest of this entry »

VIDEO

Enter the video embed code here. Remember to change the size to 320 x 270 in the embed code.

TAG CLOUD

Recommended Sites

About Me

Nothing special, just a self-taught sculptor having fun with my art and showing all of you the tips and tricks I use to create my own artwork

Twitter

    Photos

    Activate the Flickrss plugin to see the image thumbnails!