This article is intended to illustrate to the beginner the basic sculpting process for producing your own toys, figurines and other small homemade parts and focussing on the production of your own original characters.
As children we all use clay, plasticene and similiar materials to create art. After rediscovering this wonderful hobby many years later I struggled to find all the information i needed gathered in one place to begin teaching myself the skills needed to create a sculpture. It is therefore the purpose of this article to illustrate this process to the best of my ability and collate wider resources and further reading at the end of the article. I hope one day to be able to provide a greater resource in the form of a freely availble PDF, a sculpting bible with as many contibutions as I can gather.
Getting Started[edit | edit source]
Sculpting is not an expensive hobby and your own toys and models can be created quite cheaply ultimately, though it does take patience and skill to master the sculpting of course! A list of trusted suppliers for all the materials you need will be made available at the end of the article. There are a plethora of different materials and different manufacturers out there but for the purposes of the article I will list those I know and will focus on those I use myself. Materials most sculptors use are generally divided into traditional type clays such as stoneware, terracotta and porcelain which require firing at high temperatures in a kiln in order to harden, modern polymer clays which can be hardened at a low temperate in a home oven and epoxy putties, which are provided in two separate halves and are mixed together to create a chemical reaction which will proceed to harden in the air. For the purposes of the home hobbyist, unless you own a kiln, traditional clays are largely not recommended although they can be cheap and make a fabulous practice material and should not be ignored completely. I do recommend that as many materials as possible are experimented with so that you can find one that suits you best and that you are happy to work with.
Brands and Types of Sculpting Materials[edit | edit source]
Polymer Clays[edit | edit source]
- Super Sculpey (comes in a beige Regular and grey Firm type)
- Fimo (comes in a vast range of various colours and a variety of different types)
Epoxy Putties[edit | edit source]
- Milliput (comes in a variety of colours and a Superfine type as well)
- Duro/Kneaditite (blue/yellow strip) also called "Green Stuff"
- Aves Apoxie
- Magic Sculp
- ProCreate
- A+B / "Brown Stuff"
Other Materials[edit | edit source]
- Chavant NSP (various types - soft, medium and hard)
- Wax
- Traditional clays (stoneware, terracotta, porcelain etc)
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but illustrates some of the more popular brands. In this article we will be using Super Sculpey Firm polymer clay and Milliputt and Kneaditite epoxy putties.
Properties of the Materials Overview[edit | edit source]
Polymer clay is an excellent material to begin with simply because it does not harden until you have oven baked it (typically at 130 degrees C for 15 mins per 6mm thickness). This will give you unlimited time to practice your sculpting techniques on your material without it costing you a penny more than you paid for it. You can leave it untouched for weeks if necessary, its properties will change marginally (normally a slight increase in its firmness) but it allows you to learn in your own time when with epoxy putty you are working against the clock to get it done all the time. The sculpts should be covered with cling film when stored to prevent dust and fluff sticking to the clay. Super Sculpey clays can be quite brittle and potentially prone to cracking during baking, nevertheless they are reasonable robust if handled with care. Sculpey "Living Doll" clay is apparantly harder than regular varieties of Sculpey, but I have not yet used this material myself. Fimo classic is very plastic to the touch and has a cheap feel to it which I am not fond of, although I have not used this particular material for a long time and it may have changed since then. The working qualities are also variable amongst the different types of polymer clays. For example I find that Super Sculpey Firm is not as firm as I'd like it to be until the sculpt has sat out for a few weeks. In order to achieve custom working properties many artists will blend the different types of clays to get the consistancy they like, usually in a 50/50, 60/40 or 70/30 ratio. Again, experiment to discover your own favoured material. Polymer clay can be thinned/smoothed with a variety of chemicals such as Turpenoid, lighter fluid and other alcohols. Use these chemicals sparingly as their effect can be surprising, literally a drop is enough to do the job in some cases and the result is very effective smoothing with a good brush.
Epoxy Putty can be a beginers nightmare to work with at first. It hardens quite rapidly (roughly a 30 minute work time) and it is very sticky. Leaving the putty to rest for 5 minutes or so will be particularly helpful to the beginner whilst learning to sculpt with epoxies. Duro/Kneaditite is the stickiest I have worked with. Tools need to be kept lubricated when working with these putties, petroleum jelly (vaseline), water, saliva and natural oils from your skin all make good lubricants. Its positive points make up for these annoyances however. Properties are wildly different amongst the types of expoxies so I will concentrate on the two main ones - Milliputt and Green Stuff (Duro/Kneaditite). The Green stuff is a very sticky putty with a fabulous elastic memory making it suitable for organic shapes. It is most commonly used in the miniature wargame industry as it can withstand the mould making process alot better than Polymer clays. Milliputt is slightly different. It has less elastic memory and thus crumbles, breaks and tears more easily. However it has far superior strength to Green Stuff and can be tooled - drilling, cutting and sanding are much easier. Green Stuff does not sand well at all. The solution here is to mix both of these putties together as it retains both putties qualities minus the bad points. The other advantage to epoxy is the air drying allows you to work on the piece without accidently touching and spoiling your previous work. All to often you will squash a piece you have just finished sculpting and have to do it all over again.
