Hey,

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Sculpt Along

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 latest posts here, 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.
Right then, today we’re going to get to here:

and the last installment got us to here:

so this week it’s time to turn our attention to the business of sculpting the torso.  I’ll detail how I have sculpted the shirt, the belt buckle and beltloops.  Then I’ve ground a lot of the detail off and started again, this time with a different look.  Hopefully this will demonstrate how a very different effect can be gotten through the very same techniques.  With a bit of luck this should inspire and reassure those of you who are taking on very different projects from my mad hatter mini that you can achieve whatever you are trying to in a very similar way.  Anyway, on to the specifics:

<thousands of words got deleted at this point, and it’s taken me a few days to pluck up the courage to get it all written again!>

First off, I’m going to make the shirt.

I begin by covering the chest with a thin rolled out layer of putty (remember how to do this from the last installment with the trousers?  if not, pop back there to remind yourself – if it’s not working, contact me and I’ll see if I can help).

You may prefer to do this with a square piece at this stage, in order to allow it to be hooked over the shoulders.  you can always cut a ‘head hole’ with a sharp knife, preferably a scalpel, or some other precision instrument.

As I smooth the putty over the chest, I hope you can see why I went to the trouble to get the shape of the torso right underneath, but didn’t bust a gut to sculpt silly little nipples, or make allowance for chest hair or anything.  If I’d been after a bare chest at this point, then I would re-define the muscles, cracks and crevices.  As it is, we want to simulate a soft thin surface, a shirt.  As with the trousers, we can’t add all the creases we see in real life, its a matter of being selective in order to help the final surface look as good as possible with as little time wastage as possible.

When it comes to smoothing the putty around the belt line, if some is tucked in the trousers, but some isn’t, then at this stage that’s fine – when you add  creases it will simply seem like some is coming untucked.

Once that is smoothed on, but still pretty uncured and therefore supple, I begin work on the details.  Below, as an example of some of the creases I’m going to be sculpting, I’ll demonstrate on the side of his torso by his pectoral (moob).  In the first picture you can see it smoothed on, and you can see I haven’t skimped on this stage, smoothing it with plenty of lubricant until I was totally comfortable that it was a blank canvas on which to work on.  On the second picture you can see that I’ve used two or three confident firm strokes with the small pointed clay shaper.  That’s all it was, we’re talking 20 seconds work (obviously I’ve had a bit of practice at that).  That confidence is the trick, rather than over thinking each slightest fold.  I suggest you get pictures of shirts from google or wherever, or look at yourself in one if that is appropriate, and go for a representative approximation rather than an exact copy.

The most obvious detail on the shirt is the strip of buttons down the front.  I’ll work on the collar once I’ve got the head and lab coat on him in a future installment, but for now i’m looking to do the buttons from the first one down to where the shirt gathers/tucks into the trousers.  In the pic above you can see that I’ve run a scalpel, almost parallel to the surface to create a seam.  I then work from the top to the bottom of the chest, with the tapered small pointed clay shaper again, alternating between pushing a small indent where the button would go, and pushing slightly in from the side of the seam I’ve cut, so that where the buttons will be the fabric is closed, and between them it is more open.  Again, simple considered movements to generate one specific result.  I’ve then grabbed my scalpel, and using the blunt back edge of the blade, I’ve added a couple of much more pronounced creases  in order to make it look like the buttons are under a little tension, as they would be if I was wearing a suit, and reared up to throw something.  At one point in this process I actually struck the pose in front of a full length mirror in order to base my sculpting on the real thing as effectively as I can.  Very well worth doing if you can.

In the next few pictures you’ll be able to see as more folds take place, each with a few confident firm strokes with the clay shaper.

Where I’ve worked on it, I’ve lost some definition around the button strip, particularly around the sternum, which is now definately concave.  That’s easy to fix, I leave the putty to cure some more, when I’m happy with how it’s looking, and come in with a fresh piece to fill the cavity.  I smooth this on, cut the button strip out with the scalpel, dot the buttons back on again, and it’s as good as new.  I’ve tried to mix the putty a different colour so you can see this, but when it’s cast, you’ll never know that extra piece of putty was there, so that’s fine.  I’ve wanted to document the fact that I very often problem solve when I sculpt, fixing things here and there, and I hope you’ll see that no one gets it right automatically.

as you can see from the last picture is a small piece of putty, a little sausage of it.this is soon to become the breast pocket.when you look at somebody in a cheap white shirts, you can sometimes see the pocket through the shirt material itself.this is one of those times when I think of that sort of detail is best left to the painter and as the sculptor it’s important that you don’t clutter up the area with lots of little layers of party.our little piece of party is going to just simply become the top of the pocket.  Is that called the hem? Anyway, whatever it’s called that’s what I’m going to sculpt it now.

I smooth this sausage of party down into a flat sausage, and then using a scalpel, I cut it into a rectangle shape. I use the chisel clay shaper to smooth down the edges slightly, being careful not to splay the party onto the shirt below at the corners.

The putty of the shirt itself is still slightly supple, so I am able to push my pointed small clay shaper into the top of the pocket as if I was putting a tiny pen in it. I do this several times and then underneath the hem of the pocket I do the same thing but just pushing into the body of the shirt and not up into the hem. The indents below correspond to the holes above in reverse, by which I mean where there is a hole above, there will be a divot to the left and the right.  Although it isn’t quite right, it forms an approximation of the shape the pens would leave around the pocket.  At this point, I would allow the putty to dry and then make an extremely small set of Biros, or rather Biro caps by rolling putty into a sausage, cutting its to length, narrowing one end, and superglueing it thick end downinto the divot above the top of the pocket.  Sadly, as you’ll later see I decided to change the torso of the mad Hatter, and as such I accidentally ground off the detail here before I had a chance to demonstrate. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge.

Next, while the shirt cures, I am going to work on the belt.  At the risk of sounding repetitive, all I am doing here is reducing what is actually quite a complex task, into a series of simple movements.  If you bear this in mind and apply this theory to virtually anything that you sculpt, you won’t go far wrong. To begin with I need to add a belt buckle.  I do this by choosing a small round piece of putty, glueing it in place, and flattening it out. I then grab my scalpel, and really set to work.

I want to create a roughly square buckle, although the theory is the same regardless of the shape that you choose. I begin by shaping the outside of the buckle into a rough square, and then start work on the inside, I tracing with the point of the scalpel blade, in a slightly smaller square. I don’t use my small clay shapers, to smooth the inside of the smaller square into a little horizontal hump. Now, with a little imagination it is beginning to look like a rudimentary buckle. It is not quite there yet, and so I add the little tooth of the buckle by simply adding on a small sausage of party in the right place. Finally, to the right hand side of the buckle, I had a larger sausage of party, flatten it, and shape it into the loose end of the belt strap.

I use my pointed clay shaper to add small buckle holes down this length of belt,and voilà!one simple belt, and now I am practised, the entire process took me less than 5 minutes from start to finish.

The trousers need to interact with the belt, so I add some belt loops.  This is really simple, a small strip of putty was attached roughly across the belt at the right point as can be seen here:

and then it is trimmed and blended slightly with the scalpel and the small wedge clay shaper:

it is at this point that I have somewhat of an epiphany. For some reason, I’m not getting on with the whole concept of the mad hatter any more. I know better than to panic, it’s not like this is the first time this has happened, but now I’m halfway through the sculpt, I have invested a lot of time, and there’s all of you lot waiting on the next instalment, so I’ve got to fix this.  I sit and think, and speak to the guy who is helping design the role-playing game that is associated with these miniatures, and we strike on the notion of him being truly mad.  This will set him apart, I don’t just want to design yet another mad professor type character. The idea or something suspicious sewn into his stomach is born. Genius! Now, his chest and stomach can have some sort of feature on the figure, he can look properly mad instead of just a little bit mad.  This allows for some really interesting rules, for when he presses the big red button, and we find out what he’s actually been feeding himself! Okay, I grant you, that this whole process hasn’t exactly been super smooth and ideal for a tutorial, however I did promise that this would be a real world experience, and as such I feel obliged to  document the entire process.

I begin the alterations by grinding off the now cured parts of the miniature which I am not no longer interested in.

It is at this moment that I destroy the breast pocket, something I was planning on keeping. I suspect that only God truly knows why my hand moved in that way and I removed that detail. Muppet (me, not God, obviously).  Anyway, with the relevant parts of the model cleaned down, I add a large round piece of putty to the stomach, and smooth it down, as if I were sculpting a pregnant person.  You can see that I’ve bent the arm out of the way at this stage – it’s why I haven’t bulked it out yet, to give that flexibility.  It’ll get bent back into place when I don’t need acces down his side any more.

Once this is smooth (note the creases on the side of the stomach that matches the lower shoulder), I simply add in the belly button with the small pointed clay shaper:

…and then I had to scar into which he may have put all manner of unpleasantness. Did he operate on himself? Was it somebody else? Is it explosives? Is it a self-destruct mechanism? Is it a hamster in a wheel? Who knows.

The way that I add this, is quite simply to take the scalpel, cuts a line where I want to scar to go,

and then add small lines perpendicular to this one to show where the wound has been re-stitched.

Now, I simply wait for the putty to cure, and when it is I add the shirt in exactly the same way as I added the shirt before, except this time it will be open. In order to do this properly, another Google search ensues, and in a couple of minutes I find pictures of fat men with open shirts. Yuck! Good reference material though. The button strip and the buttons are added in exactly the same way as before, and at this stage I have reached the end of my instalment for the week.

Next week, I shall add the lab coat, and then I think the following week is going to be the infamous face week.  What do you all think of that? I have been wondering when to introduce the face, as I am aware that it is the part of the anatomy which most people find most intimidating. Anyway, it has to be done, and I don’t use any more techniques that I have already demonstrated to do it, there are simply more things to take into account during the process.

I am really looking forward to seeing what people come up with this week as ever, it is taking me many hours to put these tutorials together, and this is an absolute joy to when those of you who are posting regularly, post their work in progress pictures for me to see. Thanks again everybody, see you here next week for more sculpty goodness

Happy sculpting!

James.