Lol - no no, I'm not crashing... I'm just coming to a point where I either need to learn how to smooth these better in oil based clay (I've tried a # of things I know of but maybe I'm not doing them right).. orrrr I need to give up and when (I'll probably do one or more of these from the past few days as gifts at least for the family), then I can get things smooth... I'm sleepy early (for me!) so I'll let the pictures explain.. I can get rid of the burrs & torn areas, it's areas like over the bridge of the nose, jowl muscles, throat area - these I can't seem to get smooth with tools at hand (like I did the neck with my fingers...)...
Yes some of that darkness over the nose for example is burn-stained clay from my heated tools being too hot... oops!
After looking at the first pic there in reverse I'm tempted to look into the craft store types of casting materials... there must be some interesting stuff out there I bet! Clay is so creamy - just love that! Want to make mermaids and kelp now - YES I'm SO KITSCHY hahaha!!! So sorry! :D (tired too - g'nite!)
Added this on in the morning - DOH! Would help to know this; This is Van Aken clay & is similar to most plastalines but it's less oily than what I'm used to.. waxier too. I think that's part of it. (Oh and rubbing alcohol does very funky things). In water-based clays it's easy to smooth nice enough with brushes, this is an oil based clay I've tried the brush/mineral oil means to & it makes it gummy.
4 comments:
Hi Morgan.. did you get my comment about the wax clay and using an alcohol burner with denatured alcohol in it to heat your tools? that way you wont get the clay black when heating it.. also use goo gone for smoothing and a medium soft but firm brush... thats the trick.. took me many years to figure that one out myself.. anyways.. the wax clay I use is either casteline clay ( its more waxy and come in firm and medium) or try one of the different willow waxes... they will send you samples of each kind you want to try for not much money and all are firm enough to stand with only wire in the legs and no armature like the pipe.. its one reason I use them.. you can also hold them in your hand while sculpting and not loose any details and can get much sharper details than clay...) if you cant find the willow wax in a search email me..becky@solticeart.com the others stuff you can find at www.sculpt.com they are the only ones who carry casteline wax clay and they have a cool plastic alcohol burner that has marbles in the bottom so it wont knock over easy! plus if you squeeze it it turns into a torch! its pretty cool! about 8 bucks for it.. 'Becky Turner
Hi Becky, I did - I think I replied to it but basically... yeah, I just need to not heat my tools quite so hot sometimes (clay need not boil when steel touches it!). ;)
No I do wipe off the soot, I have used the alcohol burners before in the past. Overall I'm not so fond of flames period given all else I've got floating around. We'll see.
THe4 willow waxes are something I've wanted to get into for years since Sarah Rose and Mel Miller started sharing their experiences with them. Mostly I never delved into the clays in the past due to having made plenty of waste molds in my lifetime and not being good at it at all. Now that I can drive to the casters in under a day it's more worthwhile to me to hand it over.
Oh, torches.. yeah... SO not a fan. Hahaha - no seriously, sculpting class required welding and I loathed it. My hands shook so bad when welding that my teach had to hold them still.
Fortunately my fiance is a welder. ;)
OH! My clay fellow here stood on his own briefly - took him off the stand just to see.
Have you tried the wax pens (the ones that heat up)? These I'm curious about too.
hey, no not tried the pens yet but plan to. oh nad when I say torch..lol I mean a tiny tiny one.. go look at the burner Im talking about.. and you will see what I man.. it has a tiny little piece of metal tube on the tip.. one a needle might fit into.. that tiny... and when you squeeze the bottle it will make your flame go kinda torch like.. its really just adding air or alcohol to the flame is all but when you squeeze the bottle it does a tiny torch like flame.. it really comes in handy to make an area really smooth... you just hold the bottle and torch like a bely area very lightly and ..smooth! as long as you dont do it more than just go over it fast or it of course melts.. and oyu learn to only put your tool into the flame for a sec.. its kind nice to have a clean flame there for your tool and like i said the bottle has marbles in it so it wont tip over.. and its not a very big bottle... so try it out! really its very safe! actually safer than using a candle...I really think you'll like it.. theres a big difference than using a candle.. plus it heats your tool faster too.. only holding it into the flame for a count of one.. and thats it.. after awhile you learn exactly how long to hold it into the flame to get how hot you need it.. Carol Huddelson came over for some sculpting tips fomr me awhile back and I was showing her how to do that and we found a count of one works jsut right for how I usually do it...
Ok, I'll admit that sounds a little less intimidating than welding! ;) I need to go look up something on sculptor house anyhow so I'll click on the product info for those. Somehow I guess the ones I looked at were basically candles. Cool! Sorry!
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