Sculpting Basics I

A Guest Article by CMDante

Following his recent acquisition of some colour shapers, coupled with his first forays into sculpting with Green Stuff, Grey_Death was kind enough to ask me to contribute a tutorial or two on sculpting. Having never written a proper tutorial before, I hope you will all forgive the inevitable mistakes I will make along the way!

This tutorial will cover some old ground and hopefully a few new insights as well. First, the old ground:

Tools

There are a few core sculpting tools that all sculptors should have. Below is a list of the tools I use along with their uses (See image 1. below).

• 1. Pin Vice - Used to drill holes for pinning and creating holes (for mesh, gun barrels etc).
• 2. Jewelers Files - Nice, small files for filing down plastic/resin/metal/cured putty. Good for making sharp edges in cured putty.
• 3. Clay Shapers - Used to shape putty and smooth surfaces. I mainly use the white chisel headed one to do most of the shaping and smoothing, with the bullet headed one being used for concave shapes and creating folds etc.
• 4. Metal Sculpting Tools - These are from a cheap Gale Force 9 set. The tool with a half round on one end and a blade on the other gets used a lot to blend putty into other surfaces (cured putty/resin/metal/plastic etc). The pointed tool is used to create fine details and small holes, hair, rips etc.
• 5. Scalpel - Used to cut plastic/resin/cured putty into shape and to remove any excess putty.
• 6. Paper Clips - Used as pins for pinning figures and as armatures for sculpting over.

Above is also a list of a selection of putties I use for sculpting (Image 2.):

• 1. Fimo (Champagne) - I haven't actually used this yet, but it comes highly recommended. A good material to practice with as it doesn't cure unless baked. When working with it, keep your work sealed in a jar in a shaded area to avoid any dust getting on the putty, or any accidental smudging. (Staedtler Fimo Classic Polymer Clay)
• 2. Green Stuff - The putty of choice for most sculptors. A 2 part epoxy resin that requires mixing before use. Can be mixed in different ratios in order to achieve a variety of sculpting times. The more yellow, the softer the mix will be and the longer the curing time, the more blue, the harder the mix will be and a shorter curing time. Knead thoroughly to ensure no lumps of yellow or blue otherwise they will ruin the finish as they won't cure properly.
• 3. Brown Stuff - Like Green Stuff, but a much firmer putty and more solid when cured, making it better for doing hard edged surfaces and mechanical parts.
• 4. Milliput - Super Fine - Used to bulk work on bases and also for making "Milliput washes" (milliput mixed with water), which are used to fill small impurities in resin and metal sufaces, and also in putty work. Washes can also be used in a thicker mix to fill small gaps and seams in sculpting and conversion work.
• 5. 1200 Grit Wet Dry Paper - Not a putty, but another tool used in conjunction with the putty. Used to sand surfaces to get a super smooth finish. I tend to sand all surfaces with this before painting in order to have a perfect surface to paint over. When sculpting, it can be used to sand out and seams and get a flush surface between putty and plastic/resin/metal/cured putty.

Now that, that is out of the road, on with the sculpting!

The Subject

The subject for this tutorial is a Victrix plastic Napoleonic Frenchman (example 1. below) which I am converting into a Rogue Trader. As the Victrix figures are a good deal smaller and thinner than Games Workshop's plastic figures, I will be using Green Stuff to bulk the figure out and to sculpt new feet in order to add some height to the figure.


The Sculpting

As can be seen in example 2 above, I have started by creating a rough base shape to work over for the feet. This was created by removing the original figures feet and putting two paper clip pins into the legs, running all the way down into the cork base. The rough shape of the feet was then built up over the paper clips and left to cure overnight. I always use a cork as a holder for sculpting projects as it is easy to push the pinned feet of models into, providing a nice large surface to hold onto that keeps your fingers away from the putty while you work on it. Champagne corks are best as they are nice and wide and have a nice flat, wide base to provide a stable surface for your work to stand on when you leave it to cure.


Putty is then added to the base work (See example 1 above) in order to add volume to the shape along with some basic details. The putty is then shaped and smoothed to form the shape of a booted foot (See example 2 above). No folds or creases are added on the boot at this stage as I find it easier to add these seperately once the shape is formed and cured. Where the freshly applied putty meets cured putty from the previous stage, the edges are smoothed into the previous layer using the half round end of the metal sculpting tool (See example 3 above). This is done with the metal tool as clay shapers aren't hard enough to press the putty flush, therefore leaving a fine seam that can show up in painting. The result of the smoothing with the metal tool can be seen in image (See example 4 above).


I began bulking out the legs, applying putty to one area at a time in order to provide room to work (1). The edges were smoothed with a metal tool before the bullet tipped clay shaper was used to add some folds around the knee and groin (See example 2 above and 1 below).


There are a few small imperfections in the putty on the thighs (See example 1 above), these will be filled with a milliput wash later and then sanded smooth. Putty was then applied to bulk out the jacket, pressed on into shape first with fingers (See example 2 above). The putty was then shaped as above, using the chisel tool to shape and smooth, the metal half round to smooth the edges into the plastic, and the bullet tool to create some light folds (See example 3 above).


As you can see, there is still a lot of work to do before the figure is finished, there is still a fair bit of shaping and volume to be added, along with the all important details, however these will be covered at a later time in a future tutorial on sculpting details.

Thanks again to Grey_Death for the opportunity, and thank you for reading. I hope that whether you are just starting out at sculpting, or if you have been sculpting for a while now, you will have picked up something of use here.

Cheers,

Dante

Friday Quick Tip: Shaper Glow

This week's Quick Tip is about using your shaper to get a blended gradient over a rough surface in a short time. The technique is similar to drybrushing, but the shaper has the advantage of not destroying the brush, being a little more precise and not giving a powdery look. I used this technique on the base of my Fuegan model for the glow coming from a freshly Fire Axe cut Black Templar banner. Since then I've worked with the technique more and here are some important tips for getting the best results.

First, I recommend using the Foundation paints. You'll want a paint that is a little thicker and still covers well when spread and I've found that the Citadel Colour and other thinner paints that work well for normal blending just don't hold up to the physical manipulation over a rough surface.

Second, like any painting technique, finding the proper consistency is key. For this technique I work with the Foundation paints a little thicker than I normally do. I always wet my brush before touching paint but in this case I use my fingers to squeegee most of the water out of the bristles before picking up some paint.

Third is to practice. The technique described is similar to drybrushing or overbrushing, but because the shaper is new to me it takes a while to get a good feel for how it picks up paint and moves it around.

The best part about this technique is that it is really fast. You'll have to excuse the over the shoulder angle of these pictures because if you keep the paint on too long it will dry out and not move when you hit it with the shaper. I used a #0 Cup Chisel shaper in these pictures and Mechrite Red, Macharius Solar Orange and Iyanden Darksun as the colors. The base is a GW plastic flying base with a mixture of sand and small rocks and the whole thing (front and back) has been primed black and left to dry completely.



Start by laying down a fairly thick stripe of red. You won't want it to flow into the cracks, so if the paint won't stay on top of your texture you've got it too thin. Put the brush down right away and grab your shaper. I start by pulling across the stripe of paint for about 1 cm to create the "field". After the initial pull is done, I work in shorter quick strokes to fill in the first half of the field and help define the shape.



Next lay down your next color behind the first stripe and repeat the technique, shortening the field for each color.



The final color goes down just like the others. Remember to work quickly once you put the paint down as the shaper spreads the paint and makes it dry faster.





Different types of gradient are easy to make by varying the shape of the initial stripe and how you layer the consecutive colors. In the rounded gradient on the right I made each consecutive color strip shorter than the last. The large gradient on the left was made by laying down all three striped and once and working from the red stripe back towards the yellow: spread the red first, then grab the orange and pull it across the red and finally pull the yellow across the other two. The red in the upper right corner was applied too thin and didn't leave enough paint on top of the texture to pull with the shaper.


Like I said this technique really works best when you do it quickly. You only have a short time to move the paint with the shaper but you can finish a base really quickly. I figure that using this technique to create lava bases for an entire army wouldn't take any more time than normal basing. In fact since you are using only paint and it dries quickly once spread, it might even be faster than waiting for the glue on static grass to dry.

What new tips have your experiments with the shaper yielded?