Polymer Clay Fan

One of my wife’s complaints is that none of the current animals we have seem to take to her like they do with me and the kids. One of the dogs in my house is literally my shadow and follows me wherever I go. I think this is the type of companionship that my wife was looking for so she put together a well devised plan to spoil our new puppy until it fell in love with her. Seems to be working since the new puppy has really taken to my wife. So, now my wife is happy and in my house when momma is happy, everyone is happy :-).

Now where am I going with all of this? I decided for one of the Mother’s Day gifts this year to give me wife a sculpture of her new puppy. It will be a surprise and one I think she will appreciate. I’ve done a few dog portraits in the past and they really do make a great gift. One of the commissioned portraits I did was for someone whose dog had recently passed away. I created the sculpture from several pictures that the client sent me and in the end she was more than pleased with the final results.

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Sculpting a unique base for the dog portrait.

I’m only sculpting the dog’s head for this particular piece so I want to do something that gives the sculpture a little more pizzazz. Usually when I do pet portraits I like to add a unique rock formation base to the sculpture. The rocky base basically helps create a uniqueness with the piece and also gives a little more height to the sculpture.

Tools Needed

1. Polymer Clay (Super Sculpey in this example)
2. Sculpting tools
3. Reference material (pictures of your subject matter or the subject matter itself)
4. Lots of patience 😉 Read the rest of this entry »

Shaping the Dog’s Face

Now that we have built a good foundation for our dog portrait, it is time to start adding the details that will bring our sculpture to life. The detailing stage may be the most time consuming stage in the game but really is the most rewarding stage in the entire sculpting process. It is nice to see a chuck of clay shaped like a dog turn into an actual dog portrait.

The key is to take your time and not rush through this stage. Flying through this step will show in the end results to go ahead and already plan on investing a lot of hours to get the detailing done right. The final details will not be completed in this tutorial. The goal for now is to build out the dog’s face, with wrinkles and all, and add the polishing touches a little later down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

Blocking Out the Dog Portrait

The first step to sculpting a dog portrait is to block out the face. If you have been following the Fiddler sculpting series then you are already probably familiar with some of these steps. The goal here is to get a rough shape of our dog. We will start adding and refining details in the later steps. Tools Needed

1. Armature wire
2. Aluminum foil
3. Polymer Clay (Super Sculpey in this example)
4. Sculpting tools
5. Lots of patience 😉

Time to begin…… Read the rest of this entry »