Making an armature for polymer clay sculptures

This week, I wanted to take it back to basics. I quite often get questions about whether or not I use an armature in my sculptures, and the answer is yes! My very first sculptures did not contain armature, and you can see the horrible effect it had on the neck of my sculpture.

Pretty early on in my experimentation, I feverishly looked up everything I could about polymer clay on Pinterest, YouTube, and Google, and that’s when I found Dragons and Beasties’ tutorial on YouTube where she talks about how she makes a dragon. This was one of the first times I was introduced to the concept of armature.

While I at first struggled with sculpting on top of the foil, and I still CANNOT sculpt very well around wire, I quickly made this a part of my process. Not only does it provide structure and support to your sculpture, it helps with making sure the clay is properly cured and you use less clay for each sculpture. It also makes the final piece lighter, which is definitely nice for shipping purposes.

The type of armature I use depends on the final pose, so that’s something you’ll need to have a fairly good idea of before beginning. For the most part, I only use foil for the armature and then wire to connect my wings to my sculpture. I’ve made a couple of full wire armatures before (in fact, I’m using one right now for a super secret project), but I’ve also found a way to add appendages for standing dragons that works better for me.

Supplies:

• Aluminum foil
• 20 gauge wire—please note this is the gauge I’m comfortable working with. I like having the ability of bending the wire easily with my hands because I’m terrible at working with it. If you have a gauge you prefer to work with, feel free to use it!
• Wire cutters
• Pliers

Basic armature

This is by far the easiest armature option to create!

Step 1: Prepping the foil

To start, I tear off a strip of foil about 2″ wide. This strip will just be the length of the foil roll.

Step 2: Shaping the foil

Depending on what shape you need, you may need to add on foil to bulk out certain parts. I gather the strip on one end to start forming a head shape—it’s essentially an oval.

From there, I move to the neck, essentially pushing together a thinner line of foil. If I’m doing a standing dragon, this is typically longer than a different pose.

I then push the strip below the neck up toward it to start gathering a bigger section for the body. My goal is to create an elongated tear drop here.

And from there, I squish the rest of it into a snake for the tail!

If you decide you want to bulk up the head or body, then you can take smaller strips of foil and wrap it around those areas. Remember, you will be building clay on top of it, and you’ll need a decent layer to account for bumps in the foil, so don’t make it TOO thick.

For this type of armature, the foil is for the head, neck, body, and tail. The appendages, wings, and details are solid clay attached to the body.

Attaching wings when using basic armature

I prebake my dragon wing structure with a piece of wire in it so that it is sturdy to sculpt the rest of the wing into and then insert into my not yet baked sculpture (or if you have a hand drill, you can insert it after baking too).

Full wire armature

Since I don’t think I’m skilled enough in this area to pass on knowledge for this, I will point you to the resource I learned from. Everything I did  was thanks to the wonderful Emily Coleman. I purchased an ebook from her where she goes through her sculpting process. She has online classes that go over this too!

Best of both worlds

While I still have improvements to make on my standing dragons, I experimented until I arrived at this process for my trickier armature, and it has really improved my gravity-defying sculptures. It’s much easier for me to work with too!

As mentioned previously, a full wire armature typically has wire twisted around the main body wire and secured in place (either with foil, scrap clay, or apoxie sculpt). This gives the appendage wires something to anchor to.

Whenever I’ve tried wrapping my wire around other wire, it just becomes a mess that doesn’t stay stable nicely, so this is my hack to providing the stability of a wire armature while not having to connect it to my main armature. This method works for both arms and legs.

I primarily use this for my dragons standing on all four legs, but I also used this for my dessert sunset dragon standing on only 2 legs, and other sculpts where the arms need to be defying gravity for a very particular position. In fact, I think I used this technique for the arms of this dragon too so I could keep them open wide enough for the egg to sit in between.

Step 1: Prepping the wire

Cut a length of wire that is slightly longer than what you’ll want your arms and legs to be. You’ll want enough extra to fold some over to form the hands/feet/paws/etc. and then a little extra for attaching to the body. It’s always better to have a little extra wire because we’ll trim it up later.

Step 2: Making the hand/foot/paw

Using your pliers, take one end of your wire and fold it over, creating a loop at that end. This will give you the base for your hand/foot/paw. Again, it is armature, and we’ll be wrapping foil and clay around it, so make sure it isn’t TOO big.

You’ll then take your pliers and bend the hand/foot/paw into position. For standing dragons, I typically leave the foot perpendicular to the leg, but if you’re doing a leg that may be in the air, bend accordingly!

Step 3: Shaping the leg/arm

Again, using your pliers, add any bends you’d like in your appendage. These can be adjusted fairly easily later on if you are using a thinner wire, but I like starting this part here so I don’t forget to do it! For standing dragons, I give the legs a slight bend at the knee just so they aren’t completely straight.

Step 4: Wrap in foil

To bulk it up and give me something else to sculpt on, I take strips of foil and wrap it around the foot/leg.

Step 5: Trim off excess wire

I still find that I adjust the length of the leg several times while sculpting, but here’s the first opportunity to look at how the height of your appendages matches up to your sculpt. I usually hold them against the body to see how high my dragon will be off the ground (for standing dragons). We’ll be wrapping more foil to bulk out the back legs, so we will only need wire long enough to sit against the lower to middle part of the body.

Step 6: Bulking up the thigh/hip

Lastly, I add some more foil to the thigh/hip area of the back legs and cover any exposed wire on the other appendages, and they are ready to sculpt on!

The key to making this process work well is using a touch of TLS on the part of the appendage that attaches to your sculpture. This will give it a tacky surface to help adhere your clay. Once positioned, blend the two pieces thoroughly.

You’ll want to have something to prop your dragon up on while you’re adding the appendages, but you’ll find that once you have all your appendages on, as long as the sculpture is balanced (which the foil armature helps with too!) it stands extremely sturdily.

This was a look at my armature process, and I hope you’ve found it helpful! If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to comment down below. I usually respond within a few days.