Hey,

Welcome to the next part of the sculptalong, the fifth part of our little saga, and hopefully the most exciting so far.  I am really pleased about how this project is coming along, and every time I stop sculpting and I’m faced with the task of writing this next tutorial, all I really wanted to do, is to pick up my sculpting tools, and carry on. If you are new to this and you have no idea what I am talking about, then have a poke around my blog at the other sculptalong entries, and you will find that you can follow this series of tutorials to make ‘The Mad Hatter’ from my forthcoming range ‘Malice in Wonderland’.  So then, this is what we’ve got so far:

… And this is where we will get to by the end of this week’s episode:

As you can see, we will work on his lab coat.  this sort of hanging cloth is a singular skill, unlike that which we have done so far with the trousers and shirt. This time, it will begin like we are used to up around the back and shoulders and chest, but down round the waist the putty needs to move away from the body, and this will give, with the right shape, a real sense of movement. This is what distinguishes a sculpted piece from a cast piece, you would never be able to get this sort of detail and fine cloth on a cast miniature, even the highest quality resin castings, such as those produced by studio McVey, and Smart Max Minis.  There is still only limited tolerance of this sort of fine work. A good example of what I mean here is Mei lLeiung from smart Max, whose kimono comes separately from the body.  Anyway, I digress. The first thing we’re going to do to get to this point, is very similar to previous instalments, as you can see below, I have rolled out a piece of putty flaton the table with the ferrule of my largest clay shaper. As I have said before, a rolling pin works just as well for this, but just don’t forget to talc what ever you use liberally to stop it all sticking together.

I cut out what is roughly a rectangle of putty, and make the little splits that will form the back of the lab coat which you can see on the top of the picture because I took it at a funny angle. I gently pick up the putty, and attach it to the miniature, pressing down around the shoulders of his left arm and under the arm of his right. I do this with my fingers, and my fingerprints are quickly erasedby the large clay shaper. I hope that by now you are getting a better hang all how to use the putty, and as such I didn’t need to have mentioned that I left the putty for 20 minutes before I used it. Did I? No? Good! Anyway, at this point the putty is attached, and looking at him from behind, the only thing I can see is a slight outline of the miniature’s backside, and the back of his left leg, but nothing else. A light touch is needed here, you do not want to go smoothing down the putty too much too soon, because otherwise you end up having to fill out parts of it, rather than just being able to let it fall in the right place.  Less is more.

Now, I look over the model and decide where the coat would be touching the body or the clothes of the miniature.  I pressed the bottom, the side of the belly, and the back of the left leg into the putty a little, just where they stick out the most already, and the putty moves around my gentle touch to form a good shape for the miniature. I make sure that the coat, particularly the corners at the bottom of the hem, show the models movement. Again, I get rid of the fingerprints that appear using the clay shaper. This is a stage which is extremely difficult to describe and extremely easy to do if you know to show your coats moving with the miniature.  Find pictures and copy them.

Next, I added the lapels. These were simply too small strips of putty, offcuts from what I had lifted from the table, which I cut to the right size on the table, and then glued on. You can see from the picture above that I hadn’t quite mixed enough putty to stretch around the shoulder as well on the left hand side, so before I did this stage, I just added a little layer of putty over that shoulder, joining at the miniature under the arm and over the shoulder to the back.

These two strips of putty are joined together at the back, and allowed to sit up over the next part of the armature. When we put the shirt collar in around the front it will be covered up around the back of the neck.  I am reaping the benefits of spending a little time at the bulking out stage, to get the slope of the shoulders right at this point.

Now it is simply a matter of pushing in a few small creases in the coat (again, this is a very stiff material, so these only needs to be very subtle) and waiting for the putty to cure.  I sandpaper in off any extraneous fingerprints that aren’t on puttythat you can rub it out on right now, all of a sudden my miniature has a lab coat. This was all that I had intended to cover this week, but because next week is the face week, I want to do a little ground work for that.I begin by adding a small blob of party to the neck, and pushing into very subtle V shapes. This will simply enable the miniature to appear like he has a voice box and the tendons that run down the side of his neck when he is finished. Most of this will be covered by his shirt collar when it is made, but that’s for next week.

Then he receives a layer of puttyover his head, a little smaller than I would expect his skull to be, so that I can sculpt the face over the top. While I am at it I bulk out the left arm as well, ready for his sleeve.  With that, I am done, and already itching to get on with the next step.  So, next week it will be focusing on the face, and I shall also add the collar if I have time.  then, the week after, I shall add to hair, sleeves, tie, and maybe shoes.  We’re past the half way point now, and he’s really beginning to look like a miniature.

Happy sculpting!

James.