Useful infos for rookie sculptor

Previous sculpture of the week

2011-04-14T20:52:00.003+02:00

Gehard Demetz is a peculiar and atypic guy. He makes some wood sculpture. These pieces are really realistic and sad.

Previous sculpture of the week

2010-06-17T13:39:00.003+02:00

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt has a very peculiar story. He is a sculptor from 1736 but with a modern style. In fact this guy has made almost exclusively self-portrait. I think that his bust are fascinating.

I saw the exposition of Messerschmidt in the Louvre museum (Paris), it was really amazing. To see these head in real, Wow ! Really expressive !

Previous sculpture of the week

2010-06-08T13:29:00.002+02:00

It's a more classic one, but you can't ignore the work of Rodin. There is a Rodin museum in Paris, if you can you must go and see it. It's wonderful, I spend half an hour in front of "the hell gate", just staring to each detail. I take the image of the Danaïde because this woman geting out from the stone is marvellous.

Previous sculpture of the week

2009-03-31T14:07:00.002+02:00

It's not done with photoshop, this is some real people close to this giant sculpture. The sculptor Ron Mueck is extraordinary and make some hyperrealistic sculpture but with different size (small or big). I will never forgive me to have missed his exposition in Paris few years ago :(

Previous sculpture of the week

2009-03-16T10:25:00.002+01:00

I didn't know the character (Solomon Grundy) but I think that there is a real strong feeling when you look at this sculpt. I found it on deviantart (click here to go to deviantart and discover the painting version : really sober but marvellous).

Give the right position

2009-03-15T11:09:00.004+01:00

When you have your squeletton you can give it the position you wanted.

Here I give my character some feet, because I wanted that he can stay in the stand position.

- Next step : add the clay (I will use some Fimo) -

An example for your first sculpture

2009-03-14T17:08:00.007+01:00

I will put an example of a simple sculpture. You can follow the step by step process to make your own experience.
First of all, you have to find a subject. If it's one of your scukpt, take an easy one. It's very important to take a subject you really like. For example you can take a funny character of your favorite comic book, movie, cartoon, video game, website, ...
When you have found a subject, you have to find some reference (some pictures from different point of view). For this example, I have taken a character of an old video game (NeverHood).

To be honest, this game is not a really good one, but I like the artistic direction of doing everything with modeling clay. There is really few video game of this kind. And I think that this character is funny and not complicated.

First step : making the armature. For this step you need some tools.

Draw your character in the cross position (a little bit like the Vitruvian man). Mark all the articulation and the squeletton.

Take the wire and put it directly on the draw. You can use some green stuff to mark the squeletton. Be careful : do not put green stuff on articulation.

Let the green stuff dry...

Armature

2009-03-11T19:25:00.006+01:00

Before you can start to sculpt by adding some material (like Fimo), you have to decide what will be your armature.

Why do I have to do an armature ?

1- It's useful if you make a figurine with arms and legs. It's a simple way to make your item stronger. You will avoid the bad surprise : when your sculpture don't want to stay in stand up position.

2- It's a good way to put the good dimension to each part of your item. For example to respect the good human anatomy proportion (I will talk about that later).You can precisely measure the legs compare to the bust, or position the knee, elbow, all the articulation. It's very important. You will be able later to change the position of the squeletton by playing with all the articulation. You can use some green stuff on iron wire to make your squeletton.

3- It's cheaper to put some paper (for water clay) or aluminium foil with wire (Sculpey, Fimo) than the sculpt material (like Fimo).

For example I wanted to make this model :

I made this armature :

Previous sculpture of the week

2009-03-09T13:47:00.005+01:00

A very impressive bust called "Lucifer's Lawyer" from Tim Bruckner. He makes it in water clay.

What kind of material to use

2009-03-05T19:16:00.003+01:00

First of all, what kind of material you can use to sculpt. Each kind of material can be used for a specific task.

The basic one is the water clay :

This is very cheap and can be used to learn. There is often no need to bake your sculpt, just let dry (look on the notice). Don't hesitate to try every thing you want. If it's not a success you can smash your creation and retry. I think that the better way to learn is to try without any complex. The first sculpt will probably not be like you wanted, but the second will be more easy to do and so on.

Try, try, try and have fun !!!

The second material is the super sculpey :

I can't find any shop near Paris that sold this material. But in all sculptor forum we can see that a lot of great sculptor use it.

The material that I used all the time is the fimo :

It's quite simple to use with few constraint. The Fimo will not dry if you let it outside for a long time (even several month). When you have finished your sculpt, you just have to bake it in a regular oven (30 minutes to 150 °C). You can bake it as many time as you want, and you can add some fresh Fimo on baked sculpt.

Next is the green stuff :

It's use to make some small figurine. It's just two materials you have to merge (blue + yellow = green :)) , after that you have about less than half an hour before it's become hard. Sometimes you can use it to make the armature (squeletton) of your sculpture.

The last one that I know is the wax :

I never used it but, I have seen a lot of sculptor that use it for making little detail. They often make a first sculpt with sculpey, make a casting (moulding), replicate their piece in wax and make small detail.

First post

2009-03-04T13:26:00.001+01:00

Hi, this is my first try of doing a blog. My purpose is to help all people who wants to begin in sculpting (or modeling, I never know how to say it). I'm french but as you see I'll try to speak in english.