Hi all
You were kind enough to tolerate my threads about puppets a while ago, and I am once again working on something a little different. Apart from the project itself I hope that one or two of these new techniques will prove of interest to you.
I am going to be sculpting a fairy' head for a local christmas project, but I will be using some techniques that may be useful in more usual model building.
First up I found these styrene balls in a local dollar store, this will provide the armature for the head.
In addition I found these wooden beads on Amazon, that will serve as eyes. More later.
I started off by carving the styrene ball to a rough head shape. I then opened up the hole in two wooden beads using my Dremel and stuck them in.
Next step was to use just a little Magic Sculpt to complete the pupils of the eyes.
Now the first new thing for me, I discovered Paper Clay. You can buy this stuff in some art shops, however you can also make it from scratch yourself. The recipe is as follows:
1 1/4 cups of damp toilet paper.
1 cup of premixed drywall compound (also known as Gyproc)
3/4 cup of PVA glue
1/2 to 1 cup of plain white flour (this can be adjusted to control the final consistency of the mix)
This is all mixed together to create a soft white clay substance. Make sure the toilet paper is well soaked and broken down to create a fine consistency. This stuff is great for simple modelling, creating terrain features, etc etc. When dry it can be sanded and carved to create smooth or textured surfaces such as stone walls, paving etc etc.
This is my first coat of the stuff applied to my styrene armature.
One thing I found out is that if you apply it thickly it can take up to 24 hours to dry out. Once dry it can be sanded ( I use 600 grit foam backed sanders) to an almost porcelain finish. More to come
John
You were kind enough to tolerate my threads about puppets a while ago, and I am once again working on something a little different. Apart from the project itself I hope that one or two of these new techniques will prove of interest to you.
I am going to be sculpting a fairy' head for a local christmas project, but I will be using some techniques that may be useful in more usual model building.
First up I found these styrene balls in a local dollar store, this will provide the armature for the head.
In addition I found these wooden beads on Amazon, that will serve as eyes. More later.
I started off by carving the styrene ball to a rough head shape. I then opened up the hole in two wooden beads using my Dremel and stuck them in.
Next step was to use just a little Magic Sculpt to complete the pupils of the eyes.
Now the first new thing for me, I discovered Paper Clay. You can buy this stuff in some art shops, however you can also make it from scratch yourself. The recipe is as follows:
1 1/4 cups of damp toilet paper.
1 cup of premixed drywall compound (also known as Gyproc)
3/4 cup of PVA glue
1/2 to 1 cup of plain white flour (this can be adjusted to control the final consistency of the mix)
This is all mixed together to create a soft white clay substance. Make sure the toilet paper is well soaked and broken down to create a fine consistency. This stuff is great for simple modelling, creating terrain features, etc etc. When dry it can be sanded and carved to create smooth or textured surfaces such as stone walls, paving etc etc.
This is my first coat of the stuff applied to my styrene armature.
One thing I found out is that if you apply it thickly it can take up to 24 hours to dry out. Once dry it can be sanded ( I use 600 grit foam backed sanders) to an almost porcelain finish. More to come
John
