Polymer Clay Fan

If you have followed any of my other projects then you have most likely noticed that I like to jump around a lot when I sculpt. For me this keeps things fresh and also keeps me from hyper focusing on just one area (the Fiddler sculpting series is a great example this).

In the last lesson I covered how I sculpted the skirt for my African woman, in this lesson I will go into how I created the details for the hair. The hair is actually pretty simple for this piece but once done has a really nice effect. Since I’m adding a scarf around her head I only need to focus sculpting the hair for a small portion of the head, the rest will be covered by the scarf. Read the rest of this entry »

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Completed Sculpture

After completing the shoulder details and baking the sculpture I was pretty much done (except for some of the details in the back and painting the sculpture which were not documented for this piece).  For those that have been following this series my apologies, two years is much too long to add the completed tutorials.  My art and sculpting style has changed a lot since then but I still wanted to go back and finish this tutorial for everyone that had been patiently following it.

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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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Attaching the arm

All right, so we have rebuilt the arm and now it is finally time to reattach it back to the sculpture. I went ahead and baked the existing arm so that I did not mess up any of the details. In hindsight this method could be improved if you planned to use the polymer clay sculpture as a final piece.

Even though the arm did attach relatively well there are a few weak points which I will point out in a minute. If I had to do it all over again I would want to do a better job of anchoring the arm into the shoulder instead of relying on a thin piece of clay as the support (probably would use wire, some form of bondo or superglue – however make sure whatever you use is not toxic if you have to heat it up in an oven or with a heat gun).

1. Apply a thin layer of Vaseline to the base of the arm and the shoulder where the arm is missing.
2. Add a layer of fresh clay to the arm
3. Attach the arm and blend the clay from the shoulder to the upper arm
4. Bake the sculpture (or heat the area with a heat gun)

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Adding Bumps to the Chest

I like to add my own style to my artwork and one of the things I wanted to carry across in the design of this sculpture was the bumps that I used on the neck and the back.  The textured bumps are very simple to make and in all reality the most difficult part in the process is in the layout of the design.  I’ll break down the steps below which will be followed by a picture tutorial.

1. Role small balls of clay and squish them into the base of the sculpture
2. Create the pattern you want to use before permanently blending the balls of clay into the chest.
3. Using a sculpting tool, dental tool in my example, blend or pull the edges of the clay into the base of the sculpture.

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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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The Fiddler

Ever hear Charlie Daniels “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” song? Well if you have a pulse and are over the age of twelve then you probably have. To make a long story short I thought I would do a sculpture based off of that song. Not that it is my favorite song in the world or that I’m Charlie Daniels number one fan (although I do think it is a pretty cool song), I just thought it would make an interesting sculpture.

I’m going to put together a series of tutorials for this sculpture where you can see step by step how the sculpture is created. Now keep in mind that at first the sculpture is not going to look like much but over time, as the series progresses, you should be able to see how I turn a block of clay into a unique piece of art. I think this will be a fun lesson for everyone and a great way to see how a sculpture comes to life. I will add links to the different lessons below so bookmark this site and come back frequently to see the latest lessons. It takes me over 100 hours to complete a sculpture so don’t expect this thing to be completed over night

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Working on the left arm

I think the theme for my latest tutorials is going to be about fixing mistakes.  I did not do a very good job with the armature at the beginning of this sculpture and I am now paying for it.  Basically the clay is too heavy for the shoulder and arm to support all of the weight.  I’m now having issues where the shoulder is splitting in half because of the weight of the arm and the fiddle.

Right now the only way that I see to resolve this issue is to bake the shoulder and arm as one piece and attach it to the Fiddler’s torso at a later time.  Most likely I’ll still have a weight issue at the point I attach the arm at so my workaround for that will be to partially bake the entire area where the shoulder attaches to (I’ll cover that in more detail later on)

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Fixing the forearm

Well, I’m definitely not perfect and I am also not afraid to show my mistakes. I do learn a lot from my mistakes and I think posting them on this site also helps others learn as well. If you have been following the tutorials on this site for awhile then you may remember me mentioning that you need to be careful when bulking out a sculpture to aluminum foil. Well, now you are about to get a good example on why I said that.

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Sculpting the Fiddler’s ears

I’ve been using these rough placeholders as ears for awhile now and it has gotten to the point where they are starting to bug me.  Ears take some patience to sculpt also so I have been putting them off for awhile.

Since I am sculpting the devil in this piece I decided to give him pointed ears shaped like an elf’s.  Just another tweak to add to the overall look of the piece.

* This sculpture is created with Super Sculpey.

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