Hey,

Welcome to the third week of our project sculptalongers! (can I use that word?  well I just did!)  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then it’s not too late to get in on the action, but you’ve got some reading and some work to do to catch up.  Go on, this is only going to happen once, message me and pledge to do it, then go grab some putty!  You’ll find the last posts here, and here, the preparation posts here, here, and here, and our private CMON forum here.  If you’re wanting to know who’s in on the project so far, then you’ll need to see here, and finally, if you want to know where people are at so far, then click here.

A quick revision, so far we’ve figured out how to make and bulk out an armature, and we’re getting a feel for how to work with putty, blending new with old, and getting basic shapes.

Well, today the real fun begins as you can see from the preview shot at the top of the post, we get to start work on one of the bits that’ll actually be showing, the legs/trousers (that’s legs/pants if you’re from the other side of the pond).  This will be the first opportunity to work with cloth.  Hopefully the techniques used here will be adaptable to other things.  I’m very much of the opinion that specific instructions on how to make a particular thing out of putty would result in vast tutorials which aren’t really needed.  What is useful is an understanding of how putty moves when you push or pull it, how something complex and fiddly, like a belt buckle, can be made up of simple shapes, and how small thoughtful movements can yield really great results.

Anyway, enough of the recap and theorising, and on to this week’s task, making the trousers.  My mini, the Mad Hatter, will be wearing a long lab coat that gapes open at the front, so I don’t need to worry about the detail on the back of the thighs from mid thigh, over the bum to the waist.  The rest of them though are likely to be seen, so it’s important to get it right.

I should say that since the last installment I’ve fleshed out the armature around the stomach and the pecs a little more, so that my scientist looks a little gym shy.  Must be all that bad asylum canteen food.   That’s why he looks a little different around there.  I simply did that by quickly smoothing three balls of putty into him, one per moob, and one for his belly.  It was so quick and such an afterthought that I didn’t even think to photograph it specifically.  The first thing for us to do today is to put a very thin, very smooth layer of putty over the legs and waist.  I make this by mixing/kneading the putty, and then leaving it for 25 minutes to semi-cure.  While I’m waiting for my putty to reach the right stage I go and make myself a cup of green tea.  While this stage isn’t essential for everyone, you may have your substitutes (I’ve heard that caramel kitkats work well here too).  Why leave it? this gives the putty some rigidity, makes it easier to work with in this particular application and less sticky to boot.  I’m speaking of epoxy putty of course, with polymer clay there tends to be less stickiness anyway, so this isn’t so important.  I guess you’ll just have to keep from ruining your svelt figure by getting on with the task in hand straight away.  So then, the first thing to do with this semi-cured putty is to roll it out like pastry.  I use talc like I would flour if I was making a pie, and it becomes flat, without sticking to the tools or the table.  I reckon it would have been easier for you if I hadn’t done this on my glass coffee table from a photographic point of view, but you get the drift.  Adrian Bay uses his daughter’s play dough rolling pin for this, and he’s worth listening to:

As for me, I’m using the ferrule of my largest clay shaper to flatten the putty, that does the trick nicely.

I take the flat sheet of putty, and wrap it around my bulked out armature like a duvet.  If it doesn’t stick because of the lubricant, then a little superglue on the front of the armature’s thighs should do the trick, although be careful to use it sparingly to avoid solidifying any of the new putty.  Don’t worry, this will all start to look like what it’s supposed to soon.

I then proceed to slide my new shiny and very sharp scalpel down from the crotch to the cork.  This doesn’t work with a blunt or unlubricated blade, so make sure you use a good one, and move firmly but carefully.  A little tearing at this stage isn’t the end of the world, so don’t worry there.  If you are doing the backside as well, then you can wrap the minis legs fully, pinch the putty together between the legs and then cut.  This is what it’s all about -rather than try to ‘sculpt some trousers’, I’m asking you to make a vertical cut between the legs.  Can you see how the complex process is actually made up of small simple actions?

It should be noted that i’d normally join the putty all the way around the mini, but I’m leaving it half on so that you can see more clearly what is happening, and even if you can’t see your bulked out armature underneath, you can see mine in the pictures.

The next thing that needs to happen is that I need to define the top of the trousers, where they’ll stop and his belly/shirt will begin.  This happens by a horizontal cut around the right point on the armature.  Pushing into the bulked out armature is also a good way of securing the edges of the new putty to that which is underneath.  This doesn’t look so good at the ankle, so try to make sure that there’s a flat edge down there when you add the putty to begin with.  I almost always revise the bits of trousers around the ankles when I do the feet or shoes, so this isn’t anything to get too worked up about.  You should find yourself with an ugly seam around the inside of the trouser legs right now, but hey, who looks there?  use a clay shaper to smooth it down as much as possible, but accept that it’ll be there for now, you can always fill it with a little putty to smooth it out later.

The rest of the trousers need to be smoothed too, as you can see from the finger prints in the image above.  To do this I roll the large tapered clay shaper over the legs lightly, not pressing too hard, because I’m simulating some pretty stiff, starched fabric.  With the difficult to reach areas, an appropriately shape and size of clay shaper is used to gently ‘rub out’ the issues, like rubbing out pencil lines on a page with a rubber eraser.  Be patient, less pressure is more if you just want to clear the prints, but aren’t needing to show any detail below the trousers in the legs.

If I’m simulating thin fabric, something very figure hugging, or skin, then I want to get a clear indication of the shape of the leg underneath.  Here’s where getting the leg shape right last week really pays dividends, as you don’t have to worry about sculpting both the leg and the fabric at the same time, one of them is already done for you.  As you do this, you’ll notice that if you press in bits, other bits will billow out, particularly around the ankles.  That’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with that, this putty is going to simulate fabric right? well it’s kind of acting like it, so go with the shape it forms and enjoy the shapes you’re left with.  That said, you also need to be aware of gravity and any movement of the miniature.  Gravity pulls folds downwards, obviously, so a person standing stock still should have trousers that sit equidistant from his ankles at any point.  However someone running foward would have his shins pressed to the front of the inside of his trouser legs, with the other material billowing out behind.  This movement can be simulated with the folds that have naturally formed as a result of the adding of the putty.  This can be achieved by gently coaxing the peaks of the folds to face away from the direction of movement.  In the case of my Mad Hatter in particular, the concept calls for a pair of smart chinos.  These trousers, made from a comparatively stiff material will sit pretty flat, with an ironed in seam running down the front of the leg, so I don’t press so hard that I get the shape of the legs coming through too much.  Also, I roll the shaper up and down at a forty five degree angle  alternately on the left and right side of the front of the trouser leg until I have a smooth sharp crease.  If it’s not quite right in places, then you could always have it cured, either by baking/boiling it, or by waiting for a while, and then sanding, whittling or filing sharp.

So, now we have a pair of trousers which are in broadly the right place, and the material of which, particularly around the ankles, is simulating the movement of the character we’re portraying.

Of course in what we’ve done so far, we’ve only been working on the big folds, we’ll need to add some little creases to make the material look like it’s being wrapped around an actual human being, rather than a couple of salami.  I’ve taken a series of pictures stroke by stroke of my small semi-firm tapered clay shaper on the inside of the thigh just below the crotch.  Hopefully this will demonstrate that there isn’t anything arcane about the way I do the littler folds (the micro creases as opposed to the macro ones).

Four carefully chosen, confident strokes with the tool are better than twenty little pokes and prods trying to get them to look good.  If you do that, you’ll just end up looking rather too busy and uneven.

Also, be aware that you won’t get as many folds into a material as in your photo reference material which you’re using (you are still using photographic reference for everything you sculpt right? I promise you it’ll help if you’re not).  This simplification is ok, you are working on something rather smaller than a human, that’s why they call it a miniature after all.  Trust me, you don’t need every last fold and dimple in the cloth, it’ll work out alright in the end.  These micro creases interact with anything they touch, so study clothing and how it hangs relentlessly as you’re out and about.  I spend so much of my time musing over how to paint a particular reflection I saw on a car bumper (fender) somewhere, and it’s that which helps my painting.  In the same way I’ve discovered that if I mentally take myself through how I would sculpt something when I see it and it looks interesting, then my sculpting instincts sharpen, as I am more and more able to ‘just know’ where folds and creases will look good.  Practice does make perfect, sure, but in this case, practice can be in your head, you don’t need to be pushing putty right then and there.  Incidently this approach to learning is backed up in theory, check out ‘Hair brain, tortoise mind’ by Guy Claxon if you’re at all interested.  Just me?  fine, ok then!

I keep working at these micro folds, looking for where they will sit best.  There are always sharp folds on the backs of knees in chinos, so they get pushed in with the blade bit of the metal sculpting tool, and smoothed out with the little wedge clay shaper.  the front of the knees get some definition too so that the proportions are kept consistent.  these folds go slightly above and under the knee, and interfere with the sharp seam that runs down the front of each trouser leg. This is easy to make look good, as the seam is pushed slightly away from a micro crease’s trough, and slightly towards it’s peak.  Keeping this rule assures consistency and a uniform finish that will be subtle but effective.

I don’t think it’s necessary for my trousers right now, but if you need to, you can sort out the fly/waist bits and then leave it to cure before sanding anything you don’t like flat.

Ok, lets sort out the fly and crotch area.  My sculpt is a man, and as such he requires somewhere to put his bits and pieces if you know what I mean.  Two options here.  Some people put a small lump of putty between the legs at the bulking out the armature stage. I don’t feel the need to do that, as I simply gather a small amount of the putty that has been added for the trousers as a flat sheet, and sculpt appropriate creases on.  I had this in the back of my mind as I had sculpted the little creases on the inside of the leading thigh.  Remember that we’re about to add another layer for the fly cover, so any creases that cross this line are going to be gente rather than sharp.  I sometimes mark on the mini where it will go very lightly with a scalpel.  Look at a man in a pair of trousers with a fly if you don’t see what I mean.  In my case, he bulge’s shape is influenced by the fact that he’s throwing something, so it is going to be lifted in flight as he plants his feet.  I now need to add the fly cover.  I do this by turning back to the offcuts of the putty sheet sitting folorn on the table, and I pick a really thin bit.  I cut out a small shape  of putty in roughly the shape of a fly cover.  You can do this when the putty already on there has cured or before, I’m doing it before.  The putty is pretty firm now.  The little piece gets positioned on a tiny dot of superglue, and one side (not the side hiding the fly itself) gets flattened into the putty below.  Again, simple shapes and simple movements, but a convincing result.  If you’re sculpting something comparatively large scale you can afford some more detail here, like the rows of stitching that surround the fly cover.

Can you see how I’ve used the random folds around the crotch area, guided them to the right place?  This is simple practice – writing this has been difficult because it’s mostly subconcious.   Sculpting is just easier if you go with what’s there already.  Anyway, I digress.  I finally use the scalpel to pry up the ‘open’ edge of the fly, to distinguish between that and the closed side.

Finally, onto the belt.  I cut a strip of now virtually unworkable putty, the hardness giving it a sharp edge when I cut it with my scalpel.  The exact length doesn’t matter, he’ll be having a buckle, belt loops and his lab coat covering the back third or so, so if it takes several smaller pieces then that’s fine.  The strip gets superglued around the waist at the back, and tiny little bits at the front too, and then I take a step back, and admire my handiwork.

The mad hatter has trousers with which to complete his diabolical schemes!  Join me again next week to add the parapanalia to the belt, and a shirt to the chest.  Also, we’ll see the suprise reemergence of the suicide bomber theme.  Hmmm…

Let me encourage you, if you haven’t already, to get onto the CMON forum and post some work in progress information.  It could be by text, what you’ve found difficult, what you’ve found worked well, was particularly enjoyable or rewarding, or any questions you’ve got. You could also choose to share by picture, grab a camera, take a few snaps of your project to date and let us see the wonderful results.  If you’re too shy to show just anyone, but still wnat the feedback,  you may still feel free to email me with any pictures, questions or comments, and I’ll do my best to help you out.

You’re really sculpting now, most people never get this far, let alone with such good results as some of you are getting, so keep plugging away, it’s such a rush to have a completed mini in front of you, it never gets old, so look foward to that.  You’ll get there!

Until next week, I’ll see you on the forum!  Happy sculpting,

James