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Using Alcohol on Polymer Clay

Posted by goregt On May - 31 - 2007

Using Alcohol With Polymer Clay

Rubbing Alcohol is a great tool that is used to help smooth and blend polymer clay when sculpting.  Like the Vaseline tutorial, I have several other tutorials where I give examples on how I use alcohol while sculpting (I’ve included a few examples at the bottom of this page).  When I first started sculpting I used water based clay (I had never even heard of polymer clay at that time).  With the water based clay I was able to achieve a smoothing and blending effect by using a wet sponge or Q-tip.  However, when I started using polymer clays, water did not have the same effect.  At first I tried to use water and Q-tip on my polymer clay but the results were pretty poor.  After doing a lot of research on the internet I discovered that rubbing alcohol dissolves polymer clays.  Thanks to other polymer clay artist I was able to learn that alcohol on a Q-tip, sponge or paint brush has the same effect as water on water based clay. I have experimented with different potencies of rubbing alcohol and found that not all are created equal.

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Sculpting Scales

Posted by goregt On September - 17 - 2012

There are a lot of different ways you can sculpt scales and the tutorial below is just one of many examples that you can use. I’m using a wax in this tutorial but the same steps can be used with polymer clay.

  1. The first step is to design and sculpt the forms of your sculpture (i.e. muscles bulging, wrinkles in skin, etc)
  2. Next, using a sharp tool I will draw patterns into my wax.
  3. Periodically I’ll brush away the excess wax to clean my surface while I work.
  4. Once I have my pattern to my liking I’ll go back and carve a deeper cutout around my shapes.
  5. After the excess wax has been removed I’ll begin to smooth out and clean up the sculpture with Odorless Mineral Spirits (use rubbing alcohol if you are sculpting with polymer clay). Read the rest of this entry »

Angel & Demons – More Details on the Demon

Posted by goregt On February - 8 - 2012

In the attached pics I’ve done a little cleanup work on the wings and the demon’s face.  I still have a very long ways to go with this piece but everything is starting to take shape now.  The cleanup is pretty easy, it just takes a bit of time and patience to work through it.

  1. Instead of using a brush with rubbing alcohol, which is used to smooth out Super Sculpey, is use Orderless Mineral Spirits when working with wax.
  2. The key is to let the Mineral Spirits dry before moving onto the next stage.  The wax will dull a bit and also tends to get a little tacky.
  3. Once dry I come back with my brush and warm water.  The water will bead up on the wax and I can use quite a bit of pressure to clean the forms.
  4. If necessary I’ll also use a very smooth cloth that is soaked in warm water.  The cloth is more ideal for larger areas and you can really adjust the pressure when smoothing out the forms.

These are the steps I typically take when smoothing out the various forms but there are times when a very fine grained sandpaper is necessary.  Most of my work is textured and I usually use the sandpaper on areas that need to be very smooth.  The following link goes into more detail on the steps I just covered – smoothing wax.

Changing the design of the breast – 3

Posted by goregt On September - 17 - 2009

This lesson is a continuation from the last one in the sense that I’m still working on adding and subtracting clay here and there to finalize the shape of the breast. The nice thing about sculpting with a polymer clay like Super Sculpey is that you can easily smooth out the clay with just your fingers. I’ve included some pictures below where I show how I shaped and smoothed out my sculpture using my thumb. It is quick and easy to do and I try to use my fingers as much as possible when smoothing out larger areas in the clay (belly, back, arms, etc).

Keep in mind that you if you can get the sculpture perfectly smooth with your fingers you can always use rubbing alcohol and a brush to smooth out the clay even more. The particular sculpture will end up having a texture to it by the time I’m done so my main goal at this point is to just get the shapes down. Read the rest of this entry »

Sculpting Tribal Scars

Posted by goregt On September - 4 - 2009

There are several different ways that I could approach sculpting the scars on my sculpture and no one way is really better than the other. Since I’m working with polymer clay, Super Sculpey to be specific, the easiest approach in my opinion is to roll out snakes of clay and remove the unwanted pieces. If I was working with wax I may take a different approach such as adding small balls of wax one at a time but I would have to experiment first before confirming.

* Note: I’ve blocked out parts of the sculpture in case anyone is sensitive to nudity. Once I’m finished I’ll add a link to an uncensored picture of the sculpture for anyone that wants to see the complete design. This will be done at the end of the tutorial and for now I’ll just censor the pics as needed. Read the rest of this entry »

Skirt Details

Posted by goregt On September - 2 - 2009

In this tutorial I will go into more detail on how I created the textures on the skirt. Keep in mind that I got the idea for the design of the skirt from looking at various pictures of African women on the web. Most of my research was from images that the search results produced from the keyword “African scarification”. During my research I found several images where the skirt just seemed to overlap itself in various places around the woman’s legs. The design appealed to me, in some respects it was very simplistic but the design in the images still seemed to draw me to the beauty of the woman in the photograph. I really liked this design and wanted to incorporate it into this piece.

The skirt’s shape is really simple, just roll out sheets of clay in the pasta machine and wrap then along the legs of the sculpture in various stages. Once that is achieved I used my wire brush to scrape lines into the dress. I applied various pressure using the wire sculpting tool so that some of the lines were deeper while others were kind of shallow.

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Mold Making – Step Four

Posted by goregt On August - 20 - 2009

In the last lesson we covered the steps on how to create one half of our silicone mold.  The next and final step is to create the second half of our mold.  I have documented the  process below.

  1. Once the silicone has cured it is time to cleanup the portion of the sculpture that was covered with the clay bed that we created in lesson two on this tutorial.
  2. The first thing that I do is remove the X-acto board box.  Be careful not to destroy the box since we will be using again for the second half of our mold.
  3. Once the box has been removed carefully remove the clay bed from the sculpture and the cured silicone.  I use alcohol to cleanup the remaining clay off of my sculpture and the silicone covering the first half of my piece. Read the rest of this entry »

Shoulder Bumps

Posted by goregt On August - 17 - 2009

Adding Bumps To The Shoulders

OK, I know we have been through this song and dance before but since it is such a catchy tune we are going to sing it just one more time. I liked the way the bumps turned out on the traps and the chest and wanted to blend the same design into the shoulders. The key was to try and create a pattern with my design that didn’t look like I just threw a bunch of balls of clay onto my sculpture. Basically what I did was follow the individual shoulder muscles and placed my pattern in them. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out and have documented the process below.

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Adding Hair to the Elbow

Posted by goregt On August - 12 - 2009

Sculpting Hair Onto the Elbow

I wanted to add a little pizzazz to my arm so I decided to add some hair flowing from the elbow. Since the arm is already detached the best and easiest approach from this point is to sculpt the hair before reattaching the arm to the Fiddler’s shoulder. The pictures below will take you step by step through the process. In the third and fourth picture I used 90% alcohol to smooth out the sculpture.

* Keep in mind that Vaseline is required when adding new clay to baked clay (If you have no idea what I’m talking about start at the begging of this tutorial and work your way back here 😉 ).

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Mold Making – Step Two

Posted by goregt On February - 14 - 2009

The Second Step for Making a Mold

The key ingredients for making a successful mold is planning and patience. Planning is obvious but patience can easily be overlooked. It is important that you take your time and do everything step with and precision. Otherwise what is the point of spending all that time creating your sculpture if you are not going to be able to replicate it with the same type of quality and detail.

This tutorial will cover in detail on how to make a mold box. The mold box is what is going to be used to hold the silicone while it hardens. In future lessons we will go into detail on how the final mold is created.


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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

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