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How to sculpt a unique rocky seascape base

In the following tutorial I am going to show you how you can quickly and easily sculpt a cool looking rocky base for your sculptures. The entire process for the base took me around 30 minutes to an hour to complete. As of this writing I just finished a sculpture of a sea dragon. I wanted to add a unique base to my dragon sculpture but I didn’t want anything that I felt was taking away from the sculpture.

** The pictures below will show you step-by-step how I created a base that I think compliments the sculpture. Note that the pictures are thumbnails so click on the individual images for a larger view.
 

My seascape base

* I just recently upgraded my digital camera so these pics should hopefully be better then some of the earlier reviews.
** This sculpture is created with Super Sculpey

	1. To start out I just used a simple wood base that compliments my sculpture (not too big or too small) Note: I used a base that I was going to use for another project. The base was already stained and varnished which I would recommend not using in the future (varnish bubbled up in the oven when the sculpture was baked)
	2. To start off I will put a thin layer of clay on the top of my base. I will also drill a hole where I will insert my dragon sculpture (armature wire will be inserted into the hole)
	3. The next step is to attach my existing the sculpture to the base. I measure out how far from the base I want my sculpture and cut my armature wire.
	4. Here is the picture of the sculpture attached to the base (loosely attached at this stage)
	5. I now start building out aluminum foil towers for my rocky seascape (aluminum foil helps bulk out the sculpture to avoid using an excessive amount of clay).
	6. Since I will be adding new clay to my previously baked clay I will need to lightly coat the backed clay with Vaseline (helps the new clay stick to the baked clay).
	7. Take a tissue and wipe off the excessive Vaseline (Petroleum Jelly)
	8. In this image you can see a rough design of my seascape mapped out
	9. Using wadded up aluminum foil I press different patterns into my clay.
	10. An example of my seascape. Now just bake the sculpture at 250 to 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes to harden the clay.
	11. And a finished picture of my sculpture as it is primed and ready for paint.

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