iSculpt.org

To those who celebrate it: Merry Christmas! I hope you all, regardless of what you celebrate or believe, are having a nice, relaxing day with family or friends.

For me, the holiday falling on a Tuesday has resulted in a four day weekend, and although I have had a fair number of familial obligations during my time off, I've gotten to do more sculpting in the last few days than I have in quite some time. I bounced back and forth between three projects and I figured I'd do an update on the pieces I touched.

Standing Girl Study

Well, I did the other side of the face, and got things fairly symmetrical. I also adjusted the position of the neck. As one commenter posted, it was angled too far forward giving the impression that she was off balance. I like it much better like this, so thanks for the feedback!

I've continued working on the feet some, but have kept the arms off since my last post, and I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about them.

There's still a long way to go on this, but I'm starting to feel better about it.

Standing Guy with Skull

Okay, well, the skull he was holding (not to mention his hand), fell off the armature. I rather liked that skull, but it got squished, so I have to sculpt it over. Because of that, I decided to try something I've been meaning to do for a while, but have frankly been intimidated by. This feller is done in Super Sculpey Firm, and I decided to try doing multiple bakes. I think part of my dislike for polymer clay is that I've been trying to use it the way I use water clay and plastilene; I haven't been working with the material. So, anyway, I decided to bake this guy's head, since the facial features are pretty much what I want. I figured this would allow me to practice sanding and other dry techniques on the head, before moving on to the hair, which can be used to cover up any sanding mistakes.

I didn't do much on the body other than some smoothing and some work on the feet. I also removed part of the base so that I could lengthen the legs just a tad bit more, which necessitated re-sculpting the feet. Unfortunately, I lengthened them unevenly, and now the leg on the right (his left) needs to be lengthened a touch more.

These dry techniques like sanding and filing are pretty foreign to me, but they are pretty cool. I think I'm seeing a whole lot of potential with polymer clay that I never really grokked before now. So much so, in fact, that I decided to bake another incomplete piece I've been working on;

Teen Lantern Chick

I threw out her old head, and baked the body. That worked out pretty well, and I spent a lot of time working her over with sanding sponges, starting with an 80 grit, then going to a 150, then ending with a 320 (and bouncing back and forth a few times). Baked polymer clay can be sanded to a really fine, smooth finish, and with the aid of a dremel, you can get nice straight cuts, at least if your hands are steady. My first attempt at using the dremel was less than perfect, but not disastrous. I was a little more forceful when sanding the legs than I should have been. I snapped both arms and later cracked the leg. The arms are no big deal, I just snipped out a section of baked clay so that I could bend the arms out of the way to sand, then when I'm done sanding the lower body, I can just add fresh clay and re-bake.

The leg break is a little more problematic. I've glued it twice now, but it won't stay glued. The armature wire is still intact, so it stays in one piece, but there's a noticeable seam and I'm not sure how to fix it. I might try epoxy next. It needs to be something that will be strong, but that can be sanded to a similar finish. Another option would be to cut the leg completely off then pin it back in place. I'll do that if I have to, but it seems like a lot of work, so I'm looking for alternatives before I go that route.

Here is her body as of right now. I apologize for the poor picture, but I've removed her from her stand but she still has wires sticking out of her feet, so she can't stand without help.

I'm still finding this stylized, cartoony figure to be a challenge because I keep trying to impose real anatomy on it, but I'm getting better at resisting the temptation.

I also made another try at doing a face. This one is much better. I'm not sure if it's a keeper, but it's considerably better than my first attempt at a cartoony head. I used the heat gun to harden up the features and have tried doing a little sanding on the face, but haven't done a full bake of it yet.

To give an idea of how it's going to look together, I shot this. It'll obviously look a lot different with the hair and hands, etc.: