Sculpture

sculpey is trash for make thin wirey pieces (like long flowing hair) as it will literally crumble between your fingers. epoxy putty is a hassle to handle because you always need to wet your hands and it can't hold up its own weight if making long extensions. i need something that is durable when long and thin. has anyone used air dry clay before?

>>3123354
Want to learn to sculpe (aiming to make 24mm miniature) and I would like to know what is the basic I should do to start? what putty to use (I have tried epoxy, but its a hassle)? and on bundget tools.

>>3123428
Modeling wax. It's stiff but strong when cool, but like clay when worked with the hands.

I sculpt with sugar paste at work but I find it hard to keep it stable, especially with hot and humid weather. How hard is to use FIMO? I want to start using it because it's much more durable than standard paste but I never used it. Do I need to bake it in the oven or it dries in the open?

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I just bought 10kg of this natural clay. It's almost white after baking.
It dries after 4 to 5 days but stays still if I manage the moisture correctly.
Wish me luck.

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>>3123354

Most anons on this board don't know shit about this subject.

Sculpey is ok for small projects that you want to get done quickly without molding but I hate the consistency of regular sculpey. There is a firm version of sculpey however but I generally work with oil-based or water-based clays and mold my sculptures so I can make multiples. I only recommend firing pieces if you are doing pottery work. If you are doing figurative sculpture then I highly recommend learning moldmaking.

>I would play with clay more, but it gets harder for me to move around so much material.

Clays come in a variety of types and hardnesses that are suitable for different size projects. For small scale you're gonna want a fairly hard oil-based clay, hard polymer clay (sculpey firm), or a sculpting wax (castilene or cx5 or look up a homemade recipe online). I personally recommend getting a hard oil-based clay. Working in wax has a bit of a learning curve and most sculpting waxes are great for finishing work but brittle as fuck compared to a hard oil clay.

For medium sized sculptures I've become very fond of monster clay as it's a good middle-ground as far as hardness goes and it's much more reusable than a lot of other clays.

For life-size projects you're gonna want to go softer probably so it's easier to move around. For busts I would recommend Chavant le beau touché. It's fairly soft but hard enough for detailing/texturing and has extremely good adhesion to itself (very sticky compared to the standard NSP Chavant).

If you want to sculpt larger on the cheap then go with water-based clays. If you live near a clay supplier then go with WED clay. It's a clay specifically designed with large-scale sculpture in mind. The difference between it and regular water clay is that it has a lot of glycerine added which means it dries out a lot slower and gives more work time. Otherwise I would recommend any sort of average white clay without grog.

cont...

>>3127012

While grog makes a fired piece stronger, it's pointless if you're molding/casting your sculptures. The reason you want to avoid grog is because it gets in the way of fine texturing work if you're gonna be doing any sort of skin texturing or anything. As you probably already know, water-based clay adds somewhat of a time limit to your sculpture and you really have to get a feel for how much you need to water it etc to keep it from drying out and cracking. If you're doing anything larger than a life-size bust then water or WED clay is really the way to go as oil-based clay in such large quantities is way too damn expensive unless you're filthy rich.

A few other notes. You probably already know this but just in case I wanted to mention that oil-based clays cannot be fired. They work in regards to temperature like wax. If you heat them up they get softer (to the point of liquid if you want) and if you cool them down they get harder. Oil-based clay sculptures have to be molded/cast instead of fired. Also avoid using an oil-based clay with sulphur in it. Sulphur makes the clay a bit smoother but the problem is that sulphur inhibits certain molding/casting rubbers. If you ever find yourself in the position that you need to cast or mold a piece in platinum-based silicone then any sulphur residue at all would inhibit the rubber from solidifying. An example of why you would need to use platinum silicone would be if you were making a sculpture that you were going to turn into a cast chocolate or something edible. Most platinum silicone is body/food-safe once it is fully cured. It's used in food molds and sex toys for this reason. Literally what they make dragon dildos out of lol. Also polymer clays are the ones like Super Sculpey that you can bake in a conventional oven.

I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any questions.

t. NYAA grad, Savini grad, Ex Jeff Koons employee

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>>3127016
Are you proud to have worked for this faggot?

Also thanks for this detailed answer.

>>3128657

Let me explain how things work once you get into the NYC art scene anon and maybe you'll understand why I worked for that faggot. You get to the point where you're paying out the ass for a crackerbox studio apartment in jersey city ($1780 a month not including utilities) and your student loans are about to come into repayment. You already are getting price gouged on the rent because you're young and have spent the last 10 years in school and never established good credit. Because of this, only price-gougers will rent to you. You've been working in various artists studios on a part time basis for $12 an hour which doesn't go anywhere in NYC. If you don't find a way to make some dosh soon then you're going to get evicted (in my case during the winter). Suddenly Jeff Koons LLC offers you a fulltime job starting at $20 an hour and on top of that the job is an absolute cakewalk. You can't leave because you have a lease for at least another 8 months. So what do you do in this situation? Do you take the easy ass job that pays enough to keep you from being evicted or do you stand by your principles and become homeless in NYC during the winter? As far as the NYC gallery scene goes, it works exactly like Hollywood. If you want to make it to the bigtime you either A: have to be jewish, or B: have to perform sexual favors for jewish gallery owners to get your work seen. That's the truth of the matter. I actually really dislike pop-art. Sometimes though you gotta do what you gotta do. I will say though, he was one of the best employers I ever had.

>>3127012
>>3127016
>>3128702

I also forgot to mention, if you do end up working with WED or water-based clay then make sure you give it a spray down with some kind of acrylic clear coat before you mold it. Krylon Crystal Clear is the industry standard for this. The reason for this is that the moisture from water-based clays can interact with certain moldmaking materials (especially fiberglass) and ruin your whole mold. I do it for oil-clay sculptures too just because it's an extra layer of protection during the moldmaking process.

>>3128702
so the jew memes are true. wtf i love /pol/ now

>>3127012
>>3127016
damn thanks for the great answer. not OP but Ive been wanting to get into sculpting for a long time. also any art scene stories in the vein of >>3128702 would be much appreciated, we don't get a lot of professionals or people in the scene here.

>>3128738

If I hadn't gone to that horrible city I never would have believed /pol/. /pol/ was right about fucking all of it. I had a bit of a 3 year long nervous breakdown once I came to that realization. I'm just now coming to terms with it. I swear I'm not trolling about this. It's really true. Go there and see for yourself.

If anyone has question in regards to anything sculpture-related let me know.

armature-buidling

clay/waxes

tools

moldmaking

painting techniques/airbrushing

texturing

etc.

hit me up on twatter. I'm @moosewiener. I check it every few days and I will always get back to any art question no matter what. If anyone has any specific requests that they need (such as a moldmaking demo or something) I will be happy to provide. Anons would make much better use of this knowledge than the fucking faggot SJWs that run the universities now. Godspeed and I hope that a few of you out there will take up this skill. It's rapidly becoming a lost art. I want anons to make the huge bronze memorial statues in the near future. If enough of you learn these skills the meme magic potential is off the charts.

>>3128764
if i want to sculpt a life sized bust and recast it (into resin i guess?), is there any way to make it hollow inside so its not like a solid block of 20lb resin?

>>3128766

Absolutely. The cheapest way to do this is with fiberglass resin and with either fiberglass matt or fiberglass cloth. Generally it's always better to cast a sculpture hollow than solid. Believe it or not, the hollow ones are stronger than the solid ones. That all deals with physics though and I know kinda how it works but I'm way too retarded with physics to really explain it. Point being that hollow sculptures are usually better than solid ones.

You have a few options here, so I'll cover the cheap one and then the slightly pricier but easier one.

First off, once your sculpt is done give it a spray down or two with some krylon crystal clear or something comparable. Then if you are going to have the finished product be resin you have to make a flexible mold. You need to get some tin-based mold-making silicone. It's fucking pricey shit. On average I would say about $110 a gallon. One gallon would on average be enough for a single life-size bust. Smooth on's stuff works well and they are usually pretty easy to get anywhere around the country. I prefer silicon inc.'s tin-based silicone, but just go for what you can get locally or closest to your location. Shipping on this stuff usually costs out the ass. There are two ways you can go with rubber molds. You have Layup molds and you have Matrix molds/Blanket molds (same thing). Unless you're doing professional shit for mass production I recommend sticking with layup molds. Basically, you're gonna do about 2 or 3 base coats of silicone and then another coat of thickened silicone. First layer you want to mix it up as the ratio on the package states (you usually need a kitchen digital gram scale for this). You put it on either with a chip brush or with gloved hands. You also need to have a canned air duster on hand during this. The reason is that air bubbles/pockets easily get trapped in the liquid rubber.

cont...

>>3128769

So what you want to do on your first coat is cover to whole sculpture. Before it solidifies you want to used the air duster can to spray in your problem areas to make sure that no air pockets are trapped. Problem areas usually include things like the inner corner of the eyes, the nostrils, the naso-labial folds, etc.

After that first coat you want to do one more detail coat. On the second coat, the color of the clay should not show up any more. It should just be the rubber color. If it's still too think that you can see the original sculpture then you should do a third detail coat.

After you have good coverage you generally want to mix one last coat and thicken it with cabosil. Cabosil is a powdered glass that works like a thickening agent. You MUST wear a respirator when working with this. If you have a full beard you much either shave most of it or not work with this substance. If you have a full beard you cannot get a full seal on your respirator (which is very much necessary with cabosil).

cont...

>>3128773

So you also need what are called keys. Once you put on your final thick layer of silicone (at this point you ideally want it to be about 3/4" thick overall) you need to stick on pre-made rubber sections that will act as keys into what's called the "mother-mold".

With rubber molds you must understand that you have the base rubber mold (holds details well but is floppy and rubber) and the so-called mother mold (the hard shell outside the rubber part that keeps the rubber part of the mold from warping and ruining it all.)

Mother molds can be made of any rigid material. Fiberglass or any gypsum/burlap (pottery plaster, ultracal, hydracal, etc) is common for the mother mold.

>>3128766

Shit lad, I realized now that I've basically described how to make your mold but not how to do a fiberglass casting. Do you have a twatter? It would be much easier to run you through this all there instead since this thread is gonna die soon anyway. I will always help walk any of you through this subject matter for free. Just hit me up with any questions on there.

>>3128769
>>3128773
>>3128776
so how do you actually make a hollow cast? brush on the resin?

>>3128780
dont have twitter. but you can just post it here, im sure some other anons may find it useful as well, and the thread isnt anywhere close to dead anyways. i dont plan on doing a life size cast anytime soon but it'd be nice to know how the process works, and ill be keeping a screenshot record for later when i do do it

>>3128781

Once you have your complete rubber mold you mix up a batch of fiberglass resin and mix in cabosil (REMEMBER THAT RESPIRATOR OR U GONNA GET SOME HARDCORE LUNG CANCER). You actually mix the fiberglass resin base and the cabosil first before you mix in the MEKP (the catalyst that makes the fiberglass resin start to solidify). When working with this shit you MUST wear eye protection. Honestly I would just go with a face shield. They arn't too expensive and they don't fog up nearly as much as goggles. If you get a drop of that MEKP in your eyes you have about 10 seconds to reach an eyewash station before you become permanently blind. This is why I stress so highly that you MUST have eye protection. Once you have enough cabosil mixed into your resin base that the paint sticks (you should use two paint-mixing sticks together to mix this) can stand up straight in the middle without falling over you have a good conistency for your base coat of resin. Mix in your MEKP at this point and then use disposable chip brushes to fill in all the details in your mold and draft it all out. Once you get to the stage that you're actually using fiberglass matt/cloth it will not bend a lot to specific details, so you must use this thickened fiberglass resin to fill in any details. You should only expect the fiberglass matt (which I recommend) or cloth to conform to very basic forms. Once the detail coat is in there you back it up with fiberglass matt or cloth. I have only woked with matt myself. You get a big sheet of matt at the hardware store or at the autozone (it's used in auto-body repair too) and tear it into a lot of palm-size pieces. after your thickened detail coat you mix a regular batch of fiberglass resin and start sticking the palm-sized pieces of fiberglass matt/cloth everywhere. You then use a disposable chip brush (you're gonna need a lot of these) to tap the fiberglass it they say.

cont...

>>3128792

So once you draft in your detail coat of thickened fiberglass resin you want 3 layers of either fiberglass matt or cloth. You stick them on to the still wet previous layer and use a batch of resin and a chip brush to to saturate the matt/cloth and make it become a part of the overall resin casting.

It's way fucking cheaper to do it with fiberglass, but if you're like me you want to go for urethane plastic for the ease of it. If you already have a rubber mold all you need to do with urethan plastic is mix up mutliple batches (you need a digital gram scale for this) and basically slosh them around in the rubber mold until they solidify. It will take 3 coast minimum rotating the mold the whole time so everything gets covered. Once that urethane covers everything though it's honestly pretty damn strong. It's much less trouble than dealing with fiberglass. A bit more costly though. I recommend Smoothcast 300. Just make sure you don't get it on your skin. If you let that shit soak into your skin it can be super rough on your liver.

>>3128738
>>3128748
/pol/ is just theory until you get hit by the truth IRL.
I'm still in the nervous breakdown phase tbqh.

>>3128764
>I want anons to make the huge bronze memorial statues in the near future
Holy shit, this x1000.
It's funny you mention this because I realized a couple of days ago that this was maybe my vocation. I'll do my best desu senpai.

>>3128795

Actually, if you use Smoothcast 300 you don't need a gram scale. That one is measured by volume instead of weight.

>>3128796

Hit me up fampai. I can teach you everything you need to know on the subject. I just don't have the funding to do it myself currently. @moosewiener

>>3128798
That's really kind, thanks.
I'm just a student now, but I should start sculpting again this semester. And I'll need to create a damn twitter account!
I'll keep you updated.

>>3128792
>>3128795
>>3128797
thank you for the knowledge senpai

>>3128801

If you can give me another way of contacting you I can give you whatever info you need. Do you have a kikebook/steam profile or something? If you're actually willing to follow this artform I'll do just about anything to help you out. If you don't wanna post it to here just make a quick temp twatter profile and tell me where to contact you.

>>3128804

Or make a quick burner email address and we'll get in touch.

>>3128805
>>3128804
>>3128801
>>3128798

Look. It's like this. I spent a decade of my life in this field working my ass off because I wanted to become a university professor of sculpture and fix the current mess me have now. I, unfortunately, was young and naive, and didn't understand how it all worked. I got damn good. Granted in the big cities that doesn't mean much. There's a lot of damn good sculptors in NYC and LA. But even in small town colleges it now is all SJW controlled. Unless I come out as a tranny or something crazy my whole 10+ year training is all a waste. It's all done for me. If I can help even a single one of you anons with my knowledge to do something positive for our cause then it's much better than wasting away here. If any one of you aspires to sculpture I will do anything to help you. Anything.

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>>3128816
Hey man, I really appreciate your will to help.
I followed you on twitter but I don't know how this all work so I'll let you msg me I guess: @sp0de_
I'll probably start with small sculptures, but the goal is to make bigger stuff.
Thanks again and see you on twatter.

>>3128816
S-Senpai?

>>3123354
I recently did a sculpture class. I felt like a real dunce in the class and I struggled a lot because I am so visualizing 3D things. Towards the end I got the hang of it. I am still not sure about doing it on my own yet.

>>3128816
got another question. are there any resins out there that can shrink ~5-10% evenly? ive got a tiny prop that i'd like to recast but its slightly too big and i wanna make it smaller

>>3128764
OP here, thank mate.

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This is a creature I started work on almost longer than 5 years ago. Completely made of green stuff, and stands slightly above 5inches. I haven't gone back to it because I felt stuck or road blocked on how to continue on. I have ideas for what to do for the hands with weapons. The head is where I'[m stuck at.

Would a rotary drill be good to use on green stuck and other epoxy materials? I want to dig out so eye sockets to make it look more like a mask, or skull. Also how does one smooth out epoxy surfaces? Some kind of oily steel wool?

Just some advice, or critiques. Opinions? Maybe even what to do with this guy. I hate to have him go to waste.

>>3130552
bro if you've been procrastinating on it for 5 years then you might as well drop it as this point.

>>3130601
Maybe you're right.

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