Mori Learns Sculpting Part 2!

[Morihalda]

Hi all! Most of the Randomness thread folks noticed that this chatterbox wasn't around much last year. 2018 was spent working on my brain. I think I made a lot of progress so hopefully that means I get to spend more of 2019 working on my art!

 

My last post from my previous sculpting thread:

On 9/5/2018 at 10:24 AM, Morihalda said:

Silver! Higher than I expected, as I'm certain that a 30 min paintjob landed me squarely at 1/30 painting points haha!

I got what little feedback I could on it, as it's difficult to get critique on something where even I know I didn't do my best. 

I found it much more enlightening to politely listen in on other critiques too, since everyone creates art a little differently.

 

I took a ton of notes this year, so I've got lots of practice ahead of me, unlike last year's slump. I'm really glad that we decided to jump for the con after all, as my heart really needed that friend and art time!

 

As always, I appreciate love and critiques, and I hope that by showing a little bit of the time and effort it takes it pursue sculpting, others will try without getting discouraged by the climb up!

 

So let's get started! 

 

Table of Contents:

- General Rambling Throughout
- Adaya: One, Two - Completed

- Kiara: One, Two, Three (also Part 1 of Tierney), Four,

- Tierney: Two,
- Antlers: One - Completed

Edited August 11, 2019 by Morihalda

[TaleSpinner]

You know I've got your back!

[Rainbow Sculptor]

YES! I'm excited to see what you tackle this year!

[Kuroneko]

Awesome! Really looking forward to see what you create this time! 

[Morihalda]

It's a practice thread, so y'all get to see all the ugly things too! Well. You would if I could get a camera to work. 

 

It was a weird week and it affected my progress. I did not complete what I wanted to get done. I couldn't find my armature sheet, but I didn't want to push off sculpting because I wasn't prepared. I tried making a few heads, but when I measured them later, my heads were about 3 mm and normal mini heads are 4 to 6 mm! Those heads would have to be for a 20 mm tall person! I recently made a 7 mm mini and I think it messed with my mental scale haha.

 

I made some progress on a properly sized 32 mm head on another day, but I need more eye indentation practice. I made a smooth, little sheet of clay and stamped eyes all over that. They're pretty awful. 

 

It may have been a dumb week, but a little bit of progress is better than no progress at all!

[Rainbow Sculptor]

Not sure what you mean exactly by eye indentation but if you're talking about the eye socket indentation where you will go back and put eyeballs I use a flat tool and make a giant wedge horizontally across the face. This defines the brow ridge and the cheek bones/bottom of eye socket in one fell swoop. You can soften the center space between eye sockets up into the forehead later or with it into the nose which will layer on top.

I think of it like drawing. When you're drawing a head the first thing you do is a circle for the skull and maybe a jaw attached. Then you draw a center line vertically and a horizontal line for the eyes. Instead of a line you create a wedge indent in clay.

 

Hope that helps or is understandable at least. Glad you didn't let your set back keep you from practicing.

[LittleBluberry]

19 hours ago, Morihalda said:

 

I made some progress on a properly sized 32 mm head on another day, but I need more eye indentation practice. I made a smooth, little sheet of clay and stamped eyes all over that. They're pretty awful. 

 

I remember Pingo once painted a grid with a lot of eyes, testing to see which flavor she wanted.  Sounds like legit art practice to me!  

 

19 hours ago, Morihalda said:

 

It may have been a dumb week, but a little bit of progress is better than no progress at all!

 

Awesome attitude!  I'm terrible about sharing pictures too, but it always feels like a victory to succeed at getting art time in.  Yay Mori!

[Morihalda]

2 hours ago, Rainbow Sculptor said:

Not sure what you mean exactly by eye indentation but if you're talking about the eye socket indentation where you will go back and put eyeballs I use a flat tool and make a giant wedge horizontally across the face. This defines the brow ridge and the cheek bones/bottom of eye socket in one fell swoop. You can soften the center space between eye sockets up into the forehead later or with it into the nose which will layer on top.

I think of it like drawing. When you're drawing a head the first thing you do is a circle for the skull and maybe a jaw attached. Then you draw a center line vertically and a horizontal line for the eyes. Instead of a line you create a wedge indent in clay.

 

Hope that helps or is understandable at least. Glad you didn't let your set back keep you from practicing.

 

I get you haha! The wedge indentation thing is easy, it's dotting the edges of the eyes and connecting them with those < > that gets me. My hands get a little too shaky when I try to do precise bits, so I've been practicing a few different positions. I basically ended up hunched over to get both of my hands on the desk. I'm going to try to find a little box or stool to sit on to "raise" my desk closer to shoulder level so I can rest my hands on the edge of the desk at a better height.

 

58 minutes ago, LittleBluberry said:

I remember Pingo once painted a grid with a lot of eyes, testing to see which flavor she wanted.  Sounds like legit art practice to me!  

 

Awesome attitude!  I'm terrible about sharing pictures too, but it always feels like a victory to succeed at getting art time in.  Yay Mori!

 

Thank you! <3 

I've got a couple appointments, I need to finish a little statue for my grandmother, and a con this weekend, so it's going to be an adventure trying to squeeze some time in this week!

Edited January 14, 2019 by Morihalda

[GHarris]

Rainbow Sculptor's method works really well!

 

I used to use either the rounded end of my wax #5 or a pointed but blunt wax carver to press in two eye sockets. I'd press inwards from the sides towards the middle, which raises a brow ridge and cheek bone on each side, but as you are also pressing towards the middle you also raise some putty in the middle that is excellent for drawing out a nose. The downside is it is a bit trickier to get even, I'd have to press in the model's left side then flip the model upside down to do the right due to being right handed.

 

I knew of a few UK sculptors that would lightly press in to make the brows/cheeks/nose then carefully cut in two ovals for the eyes. After cutting in the ovals they would press pins into the corners of each eye to raise and round the eyes. It took a few years before I could actually do that (I would try periodically just to see if I could) but I thought it was more trouble than it was worth. I used to add small balls of putty for the eyes before eventually just using tiny ball bearings (totally stole this from Talespinner!)

 

Speaking of art practice, I used to practice making faces or different textures by putting a little bit of putty on my left thumbnail, smoothing it out, then sculpting in whatever I was trying to make. If I messed up I'd rub it smooth again with my other thumb and try again. Worked well if I had like an hour to practice something but I didn't want to possibly mess up an armature I was working on.

[Morihalda]

I snuck in an hour or so of giant eye practice while everyone was still asleep in the camper. I love this optivisor light! I understand now that the part of the eye by the nose goes back a lot more than I thought, but it's still hard for me to put into clay. I need to work out how the face curves around by the outside of the eyes too. Little steps, I suppose. I really just need to find someone's face that I can smoosh around to see how things work while I have clay in front of me.

 

Yes, I really tried to take a photo of black clay in the dark. My morning brain, everyone! 

[TaleSpinner]

Nice! 

 

It looks good I think.  Why. are you sculpting in black clay?  Black hides detail; how can you even see what you are doing?

[Morihalda]

2 hours ago, TaleSpinner said:

Nice! 

 

It looks good I think.  Why. are you sculpting in black clay?  Black hides detail; how can you even see what you are doing?

 

This was just a bit of soft polymer clay that I normally mix with firmer white clay or putty. I don't normally use it by myself, but it was amusingly all I could find in the dark! I'm excited for PAX South this weekend, but I wasn't going to let another few days go by without at least some art! I've also brought a mini sketchbook. :D

[Morihalda]

Y'all!! I have a good camera now! With some intense coupon cutting, my love got me a refurbished Pixel XL 2 for under $100!

 

Now I can take pictures of my art and friends won't come up to me at ReaperCon saying, "oh wow this looks way better in person, it looked awful online." (I see you, @emmagine!  )

 

The last couple months have been much better with my mental progress, so I've been letting myself get back to sculpting. I'm relieved and excited!

 

--

 

Practice thread! Don't be scared of learning how to sculpt, friends. Ugly stuff we do while learning is part of the process. So let's go look at some ugly stuff first!

 

I wanted to sculpt my current character, Kiara, last year. I struggled with various poses and her arms in the way, and a couple sculptors suggested posing and sculpting her without arms to start. I struggled with that too - it made it even harder for me to visualize the pose. She was abandoned until last month, when I started over with a new armature and pose. New and improved - with arms!

 

You can see the older one (on the right) had much thicker wire too. I've been struggling with that too. Struggling has been my thing lately.  I have a million notes on wire and everything I use breaks on me. I'm pretty sure it's me. Aaaaand her legs were too long. So in future images, you'll actually see armature #3!

 

I also started some random characters and poses in Feburary for practice. Halfway through making one, I accidentally looked at my 35mm sheet instead of 32mm, so I got this weird short torso guy on the right. I thought I would remember that while adding putty - it's just a mm or two, right?

 

Wrong! I am super forgetful and a funky armature makes a funky dude!

 

I tossed him on the ground and he got monched on by the cats, but I picked him back up so y'all could have a proper comparison photo.

 

Next! A new Kiara armature and a secret someone joins the lineup! Now in high definition!

squints Oh.... Complete with fuzz on the putty. Because we can see everything now....

Edited April 10, 2019 by Morihalda

[Morihalda]

We'll focus on the left mini for this post. She is a mini for a good friend because she does good things.  

 

I planned to make her with Green Stuff because I was going to be periodically house sitting in March and I needed to be able to pack up and go on a whim. But without a putty curer and adding a little polymer clay to get the consistency I prefer.... It took. So. Long. To cure. I'm already a pretty slow sculptor, so it basically equated to like... half a leg a day haha. So I switched back over to Beesputty.

 

I don't have any images taken before the one in my last post because I didn't have my new phone yet.

 

These are my "requirements" and what I came up with to match:

 

Blocking out the long chainmail skirt and solid, stompy boots:

 

Smoothing out some stompy boots, ruffling some pants, and chaining some mail:

(Bonus cat fluff in the background)

 

Adding a shirt, tunic, ties, and upper chainmail. I need lots of smoothing out practice! That's much easier to do with Green Stuff.

I also tried to make the belt look like it was tied up but my hands were shaking a bit much at that point. I'm going to try to clean that up with a scalpel later.

 

It looks decent from far away though.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Morihalda

[Rigel]

This is fantastic work! Love the posture on Adaya there. 

 

How did you do that sweet chainmail? Was it a texture stamp, superhuman craftsmanship, or sorcery?