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Sculpting tutorial #1

Time for some fun!

Instead of just showing a new sculpture I thought it might be fun to show you folks how to make one pretty much step by step if you wanna give it a try

TUTORIAL: Female Sculpture

STEP ONE: The Armature
The armature is the skeleton which supports your sculpture. When using Polymer Clay (Super Sculpey is most commonly used) an armature is necessary to stand up your figure as well as keep it symmetrical.

tut1.jpg

Photo #1 All armature tools assembled (L-R):
1) Heavy gage aluminum bonsai wire
2) Female skeleton printout at roughly 1/6th scale (male and female skeletons differ at the hips so using the correct skeleton is necessary)
3)Flat long nosed floral pliers
4) 18-22 Gage floral wire
5) 5 Minute Plumbers epoxy
6) Wire Cutters
7) Not shown magic marker to mark joints on the skeleton

tut2.jpg

Photo #2 Start to build the armature:
Using the heavy bonsai wire and the flat long nosed floral pliers to bend the wire exactly along the lines on the skeleton diagram (if you do not have any anatomy books you can get some online diagrams here: http://www.goregoregore.com). Make a separate section for each half of the skeleton. Be sure to use the magic marker to denote where exactly the bones meet in the joints. This helps with proper posing and keeping flesh/muscle masses in proportion to each other and each side. Make sure to leave about 1/2" of extra wire for the arms/hands to be attached (don't cut the arms off at the wrists). leave about 1/2-3/4" on the legs because you will be attaching the armature to a baseboard for posing & sculpting.

tut3.jpg

Photo #3 Finishing the armature:
Here you see the two armature wires are attached with a third piece of wire sticking up between the two to form the head/neck armature. These wires are attached by winding the thin gage floral wire. winding tightly allows for great stability and poseability. At the top of the straight neck armature wire you can see a white blob of the 5 minute plumbers epoxy. this makes the "skull" armature and is about 1/2 the size of the diameter of the skull on the anatomy diagram. This allows you to be more versatile with heritage/nationality because of the differences in skull shape as well as ensure that you will be able to create proper skull shape if you are trying to create a specific likeness (or portrait) of someone.

Next time: ribcage, pre posing and mounting to the sculpture base. (As these update posts get buried you can follow online on this page: http://mordordesign.com/tutorial.jpg)
 
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