Polymer Clay Fan

The next phase in this project is to start fixing some minor issues that I had with the original belly. Basically the main issue is that in some parts the torso was too flat and needed to be pulled out more. I’ve already sculpted my belly button so I want to be careful that I do not mess up any of the details in that area.

I’ve broken down my steps below.

1. Draw a line outlining the location of the sternum and the center line for the belly.
2. Add small balls of clay to bulk out the areas that need to be pulled out more. In this case I need to pull out the skin over the sternum, the portion of the belly above the belly button and the sides of my figure.
3. Blend the balls of clay into the base of the belly
4. Smooth out with my finger Read the rest of this entry »

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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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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Step three in this tutorial builds on the first two steps that we used to sculpt the back. I continue to build out the individual forms by adding and removing clay to mimic the shapes in my resource material.

For this sculpture I am sculpting the details on the left side of the back first and then will move to the right side. I’m only doing it this way because it is a little easier to create a tutorial using this method. If I was just sculpting this without trying to document the process I would sculpt both side of the back at the same time. 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 »

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 »

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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