Using a Q-tip to smooth and detail a sculpture
As strange as it may sound, one of my favorite and most effective sculpting tools is a Q-tip. Q-tips, when soaked in 90% alcohol, are a great tool for smoothing, blending and detailing your sculptures. Before I go into the details on how to use this wonderful little tool, I’ll explain how I cam across the idea in the first place.
My first experience with sculpting was with water-based clay. Now there are a lot of properties that I personally do not care for with water based clays but one of the properties that I absolutely loved is that it is a very fast medium to work with. Another great property is that with a sponge and some water you can really smooth out and blend in different areas of the artwork. In a short amount of time I was at a stage where I could create a lot of detail in my sculpture using a combination of different shapes and sizes of sponges soaked in water. For smaller hard to reach areas I even used Q-tips soaked in water to create the detail in my sculpture. Which leads me into how I started using Q-Tips with polymer clay.