Polymer Clay Fan

From time to time I plan to write a post highlighting the artists that have had a positive influence on my own artwork. As I have stated many times before I for the most part am a self-taught sculptor. I’ve never taken a formal sculpting class and most of the techniques that I have learned up to now have been through a lot of trial and error (in some cases mostly error) and various forums and tutorials from other websites on the web. I still believe that I have a long ways to go before I become the skilled artist that I want to be, however I have progressed a lot over the past few years. I owe that progress to a lot of tutorials from a handful of sculptors that are out there today.

When I first started sculpting in November of 2003 the only clay that I was familiar with or even knew existed at that time was the water based clays. I had never even heard of polymer clay and naturally when I started my sculpting journey I picked right up from where I left off during my high school art experience. I did a brief two to three week sculpting project back in high school so I was already familiar with some of the basics for sculpting with water based clays (i.e. How to remove the air bubbles, making the sculpture hollow, firing the sculpture in a kiln but nothing on how to sculpt different forms, etc). 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 »

Finding your artistic roots. Always be true to yourself as an artist.

Out of all the lessons I will be putting together I believe this is the most important lesson of all. First of all your artwork should be an expression of yourself, your interest and your beliefs. Art should be more than just something that is pretty to look at, otherwise what is the point. I think a lot of us over time try to create art that we think will sell or please others. I myself have been guilty of this and in the long run I always felt a disconnect from my art that was solely created for commercial or monetary gains. Now, there is nothing wrong with profiting from your art but if your whole motivation for the creation of your art is the all mighty dollar then I think you have missed the point. The goal here is to get rich creating art you love, not art you hate or could care less about ;-).

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Why bake individual parts of a sculpture?

Adding detail to a sculpture is probably the most time consuming part of sculpting. I have personally spent hours and sometimes days detailing just one area of a sculpture. Depending on your skill level, experience and speed, sculpting individual body parts like the face and arms can be a time consuming process.

I am a very “hands on” sculptor in the sense that I like to hold and grab the sculpture with one hand while sculpting with the other. I do not have hands as steady as a surgeons so at times I will grab the sculpture with my free hand. Unfortunately in the past I have accidentally grabbed an area of a sculpture that I had spent a lot of time detailing. As one expects, my hard work usually ends up with a giant fingerprint or smudge running through it.To bypass this problem you can bake your sculpture in stages using a heat gun. This is really beneficial when you are not ready to bake the entire sculpture.

Baking individual parts tutorial

To better explain the process I am going to use an example of a warrior angel sculpture that I am working on. In this example I have already detailed the angels right arm and chest but I still have a lot of work to do on the left side of the body and his face. * Click on the thumbnails to see a larger view of the picture
** This sculpture is created with Super Sculpey

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