#sculpting tutorial

Working With Sculpey:

Sculpey comes in a very stiff block. For the Super Sculpey line it comes in a long, rectangular box.  Sculpey III and Premo come in plastic wrapped rectangles. I cut mine into manageable pieces with my Exacto. I used to rip off pieces, but this leaves a mess in the package and can make it harder to store or to get exact parts.

All types of Sculpey loosen up with heat so if it’s too stiff work it for a bit. Some types and even colors work easier than others. The fresh it is usually the easier it is to work. If you’ve got a low body heat like me, try sticking it between the bend of your knee or elbow while you work on another piece.

Sculpey falls very thoroughly into the craft clay category and so is really easy to work on with all tools. This is why I would recommend Sculpey as a good starting clay as long as long as you have access to an oven or toaster oven.  

Sculpey will remain softened until it’s baked*. Because it’s oven bake you get to very clearly choose when a piece is done- be it hours or weeks later.

Handling:

Pro: Sculpey takes detail really easily. This makes it a good material to get detail in like wrinkles, cloth texture, or the etc. You can press cloth or a stamp onto it to achieve such textures.

Con: Because Sculpey is always soft, it’s easy to make a mistake and ruin something you had done.

Since Sculpey softens with heat, finger prints are common.

Tip: Put it in the freezer to harden it up. Only keep it in there for a bit 5-10 minuets though or else it will sweat!

You can harden and smooth Sculpey by wiping it with acetone (aka nail polish remover or brush cleaner). I use a paint brush for this.  

You can bake Sculpey in parts. This is best with Super Sculpey as it’s the strongest. If you’re worriedd about the burned look multiple bakes can cause, cover the already backed parts with tinfoil or bake in pieces and then join.

Strength:

Pro: Sculpey- especially Super Sculpey- is a strong finished material and can handle some light power tools.

Con: While not fragile, Sculpey III and Premo are not as strong. None of the brands are great at withstanding snapping forces.

Environment:

Con: One word- dust. Sculpey is a magnet for dust, dirt, and pet hair. Be sure to clean your surface, tools, and hands thoroughly before working with anything that wont have a finished surface.

Tip: Cornstarch helps pieces of Sculpey not stick to other surfaces. You can also put it under you Sculpey as it bakes to make sure it doesn’t burn the bottom or role around. Careful though! Too much cornstarch rolled into the Sculpey material can ruin it.

Warning: Sculpey melts/eats plastic. Don’t store it in plastic, set it on plastic, or use plastic for armature or place holders for more than a brief time.

There’s a lot of reasons you may end up wanting to add a bumpy texture to a sculpture. In the case of the example sculpture, I was going for adding a bit of a toad skin like texture because the creature is a tuppy- or toad puppy. Here it is before the texture.

First things was to look at a picture of toad skin. Using reference is always important! I looked at several, but here’s an example I’ve drawn over from wikipedia.

This gives an idea of what needs to be achieved and where the bumps need to go so we can plan things out better. Now most of the time I see bumps they’re put on with little balls of clay. This works really well for a cartoony look if that’s what one is going for, but it wasn’t my goal. Beyond taking ages, it also can cause issues with casting because of the gaps it leaves. So instead of clay, I used paint dots.

Paint dots are very easy to achieve with one of my favorite odd tools- dotters.

Your best bet to find these in today’s age are probably at beauty supply stores in the nail section it seems. (Tbh both of these are older than me.) Of course you can use other things- the end or tips of pencils, chopsticks, sculpting tools- but they wont be as efficient. The rounder the tip the better for it. I used both tool sizes for this process.

For paint I just used a cheap craft acrylic. Fine art acrylics would probably just as well if not better because of the thickness, but I’ve only oil paints. You want to create a small but nice dollop of paint. Resit the urge to press the tip into the paint- you want a paint dollop with some raise. Take your dotter and gently press it into the paint, leaving a nice bead on the tool. Try to keep the tool more strait up and down- not pressing in the side.

Following the pattern of the reference, I started applying dots to the tuppy. I started with the back because it was a nice large swath of area and worked down the back legs, then the front legs, and then the nose. In each area, I started with the largest of the dots and worked down to the smallest. This lets you use the smaller dots to fill in gaps without running out of room.

When applying the dots it’s important to keep a light touch- tap and pull back. Try to keep the tool perpendicular to the surface of the sculpture.

As the paint dries it will ‘deflate’ some and become flatter. This is where the tedium comes in because you’ll be doing several layers. Really though I did this between other tasks while watching a show so I found it rather calming. When you’re going over the dots, make sure the paint is completely dry or you’ll cause divots! Also don’t go over every dot each time. Sometimes I would go over every dot and others I’d just pick and choose. This helped create the random feeling of the skin and create some really nice raised dots. Every dot I went over at least twice.

Your aim is to have dots that you can visibly feel when you run your finger over the surface of the sculpture. Here you can see where I stopped dotting.

Once it’s dry, give it a good solid coating of primer (or whatever spray/skill you’re using to finish). A bit of a thick coating helps to really give it that unified skin feeling, but just the nature of the dot gets it there quite well.

Here’s the finished piece post primer!

In my case, this piece will have a little more work and then go to casting. The cast will get all the little bumps and create a really nice texture ripe for dry or wet brushing- or just look good as is!

Tips & Tuts Tuesday is a new thing I’m trying out where every week I’ll post a Tip or Tutorial as long as I have things to talk about! If you have something specific that you know is in my wheel house, feel free to suggest it. Right now there’s a lot of requests for sculpture based items so that’s where I’ll focus for a bit.