My sculpting process

One of the #marchmeetthemaker prompts from last month inspired me to share a more in depth look at my sculpting process. While there may be some variations from sculpt to sculpt, for the most part, this is process I go through for each creation.

Please note: I have gathered photos from several different dragons throughout their process for this blog, so when you see differences in pose and color palettes, that’s why!

Brainstorming

I keep a list of ideas in a couple of different places. Sometimes I jot them down in my planner, other times I’ll use my online project management system to keep track. (Right now I’m using Air Table because I can also keep track of sales, blog ideas, and a whole slew of other things too.) Usually these consist of theme ideas, or if I have something more specific, I’ll make note of what I can. This is my larger scale brainstorm.

When it comes time to start one of these ideas, I move to a more specific brainstorm focused on that individual sculpt. I only note things like colors, pose, and potential accessories so I can keep my thoughts organized and allow for the sculpture to take on a life of its own as I’m creating it. This latter brainstorm is almost always done in a planner so I can start figuring out the timeline of each piece.

Mixing up the color palette

The next step involves mixing up the color palette. I have a whole board on my Pinterest dedicated to color palettes. These are handy when I’m trying to decide what colors to put together, or more importantly, what shades of colors to pair.

I usually know the colors I want a certain sculpture to have, but what shades of these colors would play off the best? Almost all of my colors are a custom color blend of some sort, so I like to use these palettes as a guide.

Creating an armature

Last week, I posted about how I make armatures, so you can find specific details about how that’s done there. These are inside every single dragon to help provide extra support. 98% of the time, I use the basic foil armature.

Adding the base clay

When I start sculpting, I like to lay down a layer of clay over the entire armature so I can get the foil covered up. I make sure it’s pushed into the nooks and crannies of the foil and “pop” any trapped air. I find this part oddly therapeutic—instead of flattening out one length of clay to wrap around the foil, I create about 1″ wide strips that I individually wrap around and blend together, working my way from head to tail.

Building up the shapes

Once the foil is covered up, I go in around the head and body and bulk it up so the shapes are what I want them to be. The head takes longer to shape than the body. Once the head is built up, I start shaping the body into the pose I want the dragon to be in.

Sculpting the head

Seeing the face come to life is my favorite part about a dragon, and it’s always where I start after the body has been properly bulked out. The eyes are the focal point, so those are the first bits I sculpt so everything else can fall into place around them. I build out from there, adding the details around the eyes, the face ridges, the horns and ears, the scales on the face ridges, and then the face scales are the very last thing that are added.

Now that I add mouths to my sculptures, I’ve been trying to be better about adding it earlier so I don’t squish the dragon’s face too much as I shape the mouth.

Adding the appendages

The arms and legs are the next thing I usually add to my dragons. How I pose them obviously depends on what I want the dragon to be doing. Otherwise, this is pretty self-explanatory .

Prebaking the wings

Adding the wings

With the help of TLS, I anchor the wire into my unbaked dragon, and then I fill in the gap with clay.

Clean up

Thanks to Jackie of NerdECrafter, I discovered early on that rubbing alcohol and a q-tip help clean up extra dust on polymer clay, as well as smooth out unruly fingerprints. I don’t always do this, but it’s a great way to give a sculpture a bit of a clean up before baking.

Bake

Then it’s time to bake! I bake my sculptures for a minimum of 40 minutes at 275 degrees Fahrenheit. You can bake clay longer than the time on the package as long as your oven stays at the optimal temperature for that polymer clay.

Sand

Another way to clean up pieces (only recommended if you’re glazing your sculpture) is to wet sand it after it’s cooled down. I’ve already done a blog post about sanding polymer clay, so I will leave you with that if you want to learn more!

Sign/date

I like to sign and date my pieces for the sake of documenting them. For my previous Sculptober pieces, I also numbered some of the years.

Glaze

Once that’s taken care of, I glaze the whole sculpture. I know there are a lot of artists who prefer to keep clay matte, but I just love the way glaze brings out the color of clay. Black clay, for example, looks so much more intense when it’s been glazed, which makes galaxy effects even more beautiful.

It also helps make the scratches from sanding “disappear.”

Photo time!

Lastly, it’s time to take photos! I use my light box for almost every piece. The only time I don’t is if it’s too big for my light box, or if it’s a fun naturey piece and I decide to take it to a local park for photos.

This is what my process looks like from start to finish! I hope you like this little dive into the process, and let me know what else you’d like to see on my blog in the comments below!