Polymer Clay Fan

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 »

OK, for this lesson I will briefly cover the steps for blending the small round scars. I like to first layout my design before blending the shapes into the rest of the sculpture. The reason why is because if my spacing is off or I don’t like the way the design is taking shape I can easily make changes. Otherwise I would have to scrape away clay, smooth out the belly and start over.

Once I have everything where I want I just take a flat edge sculpting tool and blend the edges of my small ball shaped scars. The key is to make sure you blend all of the edges. To accomplish this I like to look at the sculpture from all kinds of angles. It is amazing how a sculpture changes when you look at it from a different angles, everything may like fine from one end while when you look at it from the other end all kinds of mistakes or imperfections appear. The same point holds true when painting a sculpture but that is another tutorial in itself. Read the rest of this entry »

I know I just recently put together a lesson on sculpting the scars but the pictures for that lesson were taken a couple of years ago so I thought I would reinforce that lesson and also show you another way to create the individual scars. The previous lesson for sculpting scars was Lesson 8 in this series and for those that missed it you can read it at the following link – Tribal scars

There is an old saying in the US that there is more than one way to skin a cat. For those of you that read this blog from another country the saying simply implies that there is more than one way that you can do things. The saying hold true for sculpting and one way is not necessarily better than another. It really just comes down to your personal preference. I’ve outlined the steps for this lesson below. Read the rest of this entry »

Sculpting a back can be a little tricky and I’ve always found it to be a bit challenging as well. There are a lot of different muscles and bones that make up the back and more importantly the shapes they create come and go into all different directions. Now sculpting a back with more body fat on it would decrease the difficulty but I prefer designs of a leaner physique. However, the key with this sculpture is to not go too lean on the back because it will not flow well with the rest of the design.

I have already sculpted a rough shape of the back when I blocked out the torso. Now I need to tie the individual muscles together while trying to make it look natural. Using a sharp sculpting tool I like to draw out some of the individual shapes. Basically I’m trying to break out the scapula, traps and lower lats into different basic shapes. Once this stage has been completed I will build out the individual forms. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the sculpting for the belly button and the stomach are now complete I can move on and start adding back the scars to the front of my torso. Keep in mind that I still need to work on sculpting the back and the sides of the torso but the front part is pretty much complete. Some people may advise that you wait until the entire torso is completed before adding the details like the scars but I like to work a little differently. Adding the scars now helps give me an overall feel for the piece and the patterns that I use for the torso will help me come up with the designs I end up deciding to use o the rest of the body.

Once the scars have been added back I will start working on sculpting the back and then add scars to there as well. From there I’ll move onto finishing the arms and hands. I’ll save the textures for the skin details towards the end since I want it to be consistent over the entire sculpture. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a magic word that applies to a lot of the elite sculptors and one that I personally believe every artist, sculptor or not, should become familiar with. It is one of those words that could undoubtedly help you become a very talented and skilled artist. For those artist out there that are already very skilled in their craft, it will help you improve your skills that much more.

The magic word that I am talking about is persistence. The reason why persistence is important for artist is because those that sincerely choose to be persistent in perfecting their craft really never give up at improving their skills. For example, if you have a hard time sculpting hands the key is to keep working and improving your skills until you can successfully and easily sculpt hands. No matter how many hours it takes and no matter how many times you have to start over you never quit until you can successfully reach your goal.

So where am I going with all of this? Basically the sculpture in this tutorial has been sitting on a shelf unfinished for over two years now. I’m now working on it again however, as one would expect, my skills over the last couple years have grown and I can now see a lot of things that I need to change with this sculpture. One of the main issues that I have with this piece is the shape and the design of the breast. I never really liked my original design for the breast and although I had spent countless hours on this sculpture I always knew it would be something that I would have to revisit at a later date. The problem is that in the original design they look augmented to me, they almost look as if they have no weight to them.

I’ve been working on resculpting the breast and over the next few tutorials I will walk you through how and why I did the design changes. What is not shown in the pictures in the upcoming tutorials is the amount of time I invested in learning how to sculpt just one breast. Now I have sculpted the female form before but as of this writing Indigenous Allure is my only nude. All of my other female sculptures have something covering their breast and although the design was not easy it was more simplified than sculpting a nude form.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve really struggled sculpting the breast on this figure. I’m not sure what the problem is, it is just a design that I have personally found challenging. I spent over two days on just one of the breast alone and through a lot of persistence have gotten the shape down to something that I am comfortable with. The hours that I have invested in sculpting just the first breast has helped me already improve my skills. The second breast, which will be demonstrated in the next tutorial took a fraction of the time to complete.

Don’t get me wrong, it is awkward for me to write an article on my difficulties for sculpting breast. However a few years ago I could have written the same article about my challenges when trying to sculpt hands or even hair. The point is that this is one of my areas of weaknesses today. However I know this is also an area that I can not only learn to master but also use to improve my overall sculpting skills. The key is to keep working at the design until I get it right. Whether it be two days or two months the key is to keep at the design until it clicks and eventually becomes easy for me. As I already stated my second attempt, although still under construction, was much easier than the first. I still have a long ways to go but my sculpting speed has already improved along with the way that I even look at the design. As much as I wanted to quit I stayed focus on my task and in the end I think that I will end up with a sculpture that I am happy with.

I’ve included some before and after shots of my sculpture (the design is still a work-in-progress and completed pics will be included at a later date). The uncensored pics are included in the link at the bottom of this page. Also the scars were removed to resculpt the torso, they are added back in a later tutorial.

Uncensored pics here.

Next lesson – Sculpting the Breast – 1

Previous lesson – Tribal Scars

Back to Indigenous Allure home

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 »

OK, first off my apologies. It has been a little over two years since I’ve updated this project so I’m having to go through old pictures to piece it back together. This is still an unfinished sculpture so I will try to schedule time to work on it in-between my current projects. The good news is that it shows the durability of polymer clay. You can set it aside for a couple of years and in most cases pick up from where you left off.

As I commented in a previous post, I initially started out planning only to create a bust for this figure. I ended up changing my mind along the way and decided to do a full figure instead. In order to make this work a makeshift armature was needed to build out the lower half of the sculpture.

Ideally the best case scenario is to build out the armature for the entire figure from the beginning but we do not live in a world of best case scenarios. My designs are usually dynamic in that they change throughout the sculpting process. This tutorial is a good example on how I like to try and figure out how to “make something work” even after the original plans have changed.

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African scarification sculpture

Scarification is the act of creating shallow cuts in the skin to form designs and patterns. What happens is that the cuts would scar up forming bumps in the skin. The many bumps together form a pattern on the body in result creating a form of tribal art. Although scarification is not anything that I would want to do to my body, I have to admit that many of the designs are beautiful to look at. I’ve been wanting to sculpt a nude for some time because I knew it would be a great challenge for me.

Most of my figurative sculptures are of very muscular males and sculpting a woman, especially a nude, is not something that I have a lot of experience with. When it comes to my art I like to do things that are a little different then the norm. I love African art and a lot of the African culture so from the beginning I wanted to sculpt an African tribal woman. However, I wanted to do something different than the everyday sculptures that you see for this type of art.

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