This was very helpful. I hope you're doing well and still sculpting. I'm looking to get back into art after 20 years away from it. Thanks for creating these videos. I'm going to look for your other social media sites. 🎬📝
These videos are really helpful. I've had trouble finding a tutorial that explains cooking in layers, when it's appropriate/ useful to do it, and whether to bake it the full or part time. This video gives nice guidelines for that kind of stuff.
just a question . isn't using the apoxie sculpt and the like to bulk out the armatures just going to counter keeping it light and not heavy ? as in what's the difference between using putty and clay in terms of weight and work required . that's why I currently use foil (tho I am starting to hate it too :P) it takes almost all of the density and weight out of the sculpture that the clay provides . which I need to keep light because in making a large elephant that I have to send over seas so keeping it light is a must for me
My goal was never to keep them light, but cold porcelain feels lighter than both epoxy clay and sculpey, unfortunately I just ran out, so I can't check by how much. The only other alternative I can thing of are ultra-light air dry clays. I remember using them when I lived in the US (they don't seem to exist where I live now). I'm not sure if they can be put in the oven though. You'd have to check what they're made with. The only other thing I can think of is not going the sculpey route, but instead making a sculpt in wax/plasticine so you can take a mold, then hollow cast it. Unfortunately I only have a vague idea of how to do this as the materials to do it are quite expensive where I live. Oh, wait, one other thing you could try is using a balloon for the body. So blow up a balloon, paper-mache the surface. When it's dry you can pop the balloon and take it out. Build the elephant with clay over it. The paper should be fine in the oven. I made a planet like this for school. With enough layers, the surface is pretty hard. Btw, how big is the object you want to make?
@@alansartlog hey that's a great idea ! quirky but I'm sure it will work :). he's about 6 inches tall and 7 long approximately so biggest clay one I've made but yeah needed a lot of bulk as you can imagine. used up half a box of clay to cover him lol. thanks for replying. it's all about experimenting isn't it. I'm used to dogs not elephants xD if I build another one I'll try that technique :)
You can probably as long as it's not too thick, the inside won't get bakes as much as the outside and as it cools it can crack, etc. So you might end up having to bake several layers, or baking it slower on low heat then letting it cool in the oven to avoid cracking. Also, I wouldn't try to like do anything very big/complex, like say a figure, because unlike wire sculpey won't flex, it'll just crack, you won't be able to apply much force sculpting on top since, for example, you might snap an arm off. Cold porcelain, btw, does not have this problem at all, which is why I like it. It is SUPER hard (it kind of feels like a plastic, technically it is since it's glue + cornstarch/filler), better than wire, which I don't like wire+aluminum because it moves about to much. Also by old, do you mean it dried out? It can be revived with softener liquid and would need to be anyway use as an armature. I don't see why you wouldn't use it normally unless it got dirty or colors got mixed, etc.
