Polymer Clay Fan

Free Sculpting Tutorials

Partial Baking

Posted by goregt On March - 18 - 2007

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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Heat Gun

Posted by goregt On March - 18 - 2007

Using a heat gun to bake a sculpture

One of the more recent additions to my workbench is a heat gun. I initially purchased a heat gun because one of the sculptures that I was working on was too large to fit into my oven. Although it takes a little longer then baking a sculpture in the oven, my heat gun allowed me to cure my sculpture so that it can later one be prepared for a mold. Since my purchase I have learned that the heat gun is also a great tool if you want to only bake certain parts of your sculpture.

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Polymer Clay Oven

Posted by goregt On March - 18 - 2007

Baking polymer clay sculptures in the oven

One of the best properties for polymer clay is that a kiln is not necessary to cure the clay. Polymer clay can be baked at low temperatures and the household oven or toaster oven is all that you need.

I predominately use Super Sculpey so the instructions below will use Super Sculpey for the example. However, no matter what clay you use, you should be able to see baking instructions for it on the box or container that the clay came in.

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Nothing special, just a self-taught sculptor having fun with my art and showing all of you the tips and tricks I use to create my own artwork

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