Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part IX

Introduction

What a ride, huh? So many ups and downs and going sideways, but we’re almost finished! We now have a piece covered in squiggles and defining lines — have we ruined it? Nope! We have one more step to go then we’ll have our beautiful finished relief ready for casting. So lets get to it in this Part IX and finish this puppy up!

Final Finessing

So we did the rough-smoothing earlier, right? Well, now we have the final-smoothing to blend in and soften all the definitions and squiggles and whatnot we now have on our piece and to smooth those brushstrokes the rough-smoothing left. In short, a final clean up. To do this, we’re going to use our soft filberts and our Turpenoid/rubbing alcohol mix and instead of a scrubby motion, we’re going to use a smoothing softer brushing motion. Again, there’s a learning curve with this to learn the right pressure, but you’ll discover it quickly. And again, don’t soak the brush as you want just enough to lubricate it. Too much mix and you'll just end up making more brushstrokes so be miserly with it.

Now what’s great about this Turpenoid/rubbing alcohol mix is that it’s far less aggressive than GooGone and it evaporates quickly, but even so, don’t soak your piece with it. You don’t want mush, you just want a softening and blending of all the fiddly sculpting work you just did. So be gentle and finessed, don’t just brush it on. Be as fiddly with the brush now as you were with your tools. And don’t be afraid to go back in and re-fiddle and then resmooth with back and forth work. This is the time to get things just so. And don’t forget the edges. And check your piece under directional lighting, too, to make sure everything is exactly how you want it.

Here you can see Nashat being finessed with the final smoothing and what a difference it makes. 

You can see how far I go with that fiddling and how far I go with that final smoothing. Learning how to strategically amplify some features is a learned skill because not all features should be equally amplified. The living body is a spectrum of definition plus certain angles and poses will require different kinds of amplification of certain features. Remember always that sculpture is really about playing around with light and shadow so again, check your work under directional lighting to make sure your finessing is to your liking and accurate to your references.

And again, take your time with this final-smoothing step — don’t rush it. This is where your clay really comes alive and things blend together in the most lovely fleshy and cohesive way. It’s so amazing to see your piece materialize so beautifully right in front of you, like magic! So savor this step and Groove your way through it because this is where all that magical stuff happens.

So after you’ve gone over the entire piece and got things exactly as you like them…guess what? You’re done! Bingo! Ta-da and huzzah! You did it! Isn’t your relief beautiful and cool?! Fantastic job! Now your oil master is ready for waste casting to produce a hard resin copy you can further detail out and clean up to ready for production, but that’s another blog topic. However, if you’ve really finessed your oil master and got your signature on it already, it might be able to go straight into production with an immediate production mold. However, I like to play around with a hard resin copy to get everything just so, but that’s just me. Another benefit about producing a waste mold first though is discovering where the mold will catch and tear when your piece is pulled, allowing you to fix that in the resin master so the production mold will pull properly.

Further Concerns

So when to call done? When is done actually done? That’s entirely up to you. Oil clay will let you work for a very long time, but not indefinitely — it does have a life span. Within that lifetime though, you have a lot of time to play around with your piece. The way I call done then is when I can’t go any further on the piece…there’s literally nothing more I want to do to it. I’ve gone as far as I can go. When I’ve hit that mark, I know the piece is fully done. Such satisfaction!

But before you call done, take a picture of it with your phone, look at it through the objectifying lens for a fresh look. Pop that photo into a photo editing program to see it big and up close if you need to. Flip it horizontally to see it from a whole new perspective. Inspect your piece upside down, too. And look at it in a mirror, reversed. Do all these things and you’ll see trouble spots pop out that need your attention — attend to them. When the piece looks right to you after all of this, chances are it’s truly done. And it’s important to call done! Finishing what you start and moving onto the next piece is far more critical to developing your skillset than you may realize. You need the experience of lots of different pieces under your belt to really improve since one piece only has so much to teach you. You need many teachers and each piece is a new teacher. And it’s nice to close that chapter of your journey to open a new blank page for the next piece. So call done and move on. 

Remember you always have to sign your work! If you can date it too, that’s great if space allows. But always sign it with your signature or name or studio logo — something. You can do this now in the clay if you wish but unless you sign the front of it, you often you can’t get good access to a suitable edge for a hidden signing. So what I typically do is sign and date the waste casting I get back from the caster when I can manhandle the hard piece as a resin cast. I just dremel out a scoop along the edge, wash it out with rubbing alcohol, then squish in some epoxy clay. Then I wait for that to stiffen just a little bit then stamp in my logo and carve my signature and date into that, let it cure, then sand it down smooth with the rest of the edge. Then I go on to clean and detail out the waste casting then spray it with primer, and done….ready for production. Phew!

Trouble Shooting

If an area becomes to gooey and soaked, let it rest for a couple of hours and then come back to it. Sometimes it has to sit overnight if it’s really bad. If it’s been way way way soaked, you may have to scoop it out and lay down fresh clay and start that area over again. It’s really important not to soak your clay with solvent! Remember, just enough to lubricate and blend.

If you end up erasing too much of your finesses by too-aggressive brush work, no problem! Just go back in and re-finnese and re-brush, more gently this time. Oil clay will let you do as much back and forth work as you need given you don’t soak the clay with solvent.

Do you see an area you’ve ended up not liking? No big whoop! Go back in with your tools and clay to resculpt it and use your soft filberts and Turpenoid/rubbing alcohol mix to smooth it down, re-finesse, and re-smooth, repeating the steps. You can just skip the GooGone in this situation if the area isn’t too big. Now if it’s something as major as adding an entirely new head, you’ll have to repeat the entire process from the ground up, but that’s okay — everything will blend together in the end.

Conclusion

It’s been quite the creative safari, hasn’t it? A whopping nine-part series and you made it! What a relief! (grin) You tackled so much and triumphed! You problem solved your way through this puppy with beautiful results! Go, you! See, sculpting a relief wasn’t so hard, was it? And just keep at it as it gets easier and faster the more reliefs you sculpt. And the more experience you get, the bolder your compositions will become and that’s exciting stuff right there!

Remember, too, that this is how I sculpt relief work — take from it what you will and dump the rest that doesn’t work for you. Make your process your own to fit your needs and preferences. And have fun! Sculpting a relief should be a joyful, exciting, and fascinating experience, not a trial. If it starts to become too much for you, stop, walk away, and let it percolate so your subroutines have time to catch up. It’s amazing what some time away can do to not only freshen your Eye but also your skills and motivation.

All in all, sculpting relief work is a great way to learn sculpting techniques, tool work, and discovering which clays you like best. It’s also a fantastic way to learn about anatomy, conformation, and type in a relatively fast way. It’s also a terrific teacher of composition and design, of engineering and casting concerns, things you’re going to learn really fast the more reliefs you sculpt. So if you want to learn about sculpting in relatively short order, I highly recommend starting with relief work. It’s an incredible teacher, a great creative adventure, relatively easy and quick, and a source of never-ending fascination and innovation. Just dive in and join the flat out fun!  

“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”

- Stella Adler

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part IX

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VIII

Introduction

Welcome back to this nine-part series exploring how I sculpt a relief. I use the same methods and materials for every relief piece I sculpt and hopefully you’ll find some of what I share helpful for your own work. So in Part VII, we rough-smoothed our relief so where do we go from here? Let’s find out!…

Fussing, Futzing, and Fiddling — The Fun Part

So let your piece rest from the GooGone for about an hour or two then now is the time to go back in with your tools to create detail, fleshy textures, and to define and refine stuff. Don’t use any solvents at this step, just your tools. And you can get as fussy as you want to work in as much detail and stuff as your references indicate. And don’t be timid, really get in there. At the same time though, don’t go too crazy. Again, there’s a Goldilock’s Zone with pressure and harshness that details and defines without being too aggressive. But even if you do unintentionally get too crazy with something, that’s okay. You can futz with it again and again when we smooth over it. But learning that Goldilock’s Zone sooner rather than later is useful to avoid this extra work later on.

So here on Meddur you can see what I mean and how bold you can get with all this fussy stuff. So in your references look for things like wrinkling, bumps, crinkling, stretches, and other fleshy textures and striations, inputting what you See into your clay best you can. Here chaos is your friend, or rather the “organic chaos” of fleshiness so try not to sculpt in a regimented way but try to be as random and organic as possible with your tool strokes. This stage is all by feel, by the way. You can do as much or as little as you want to do, it’s your preference. As for the mane, tail, or feathers you can go over those areas with delicate striations to define and refine the hair as you wish, which is what I’ve done here with Meddur (I also did the same with Nashat, but forgot to snap a photo of his striations "in the raw").

And again, trust the process! Yes, you’re carving up your nicely smoothed areas, but there’s a method to the madness here — it’ll all make sense in the end. And on a personal note, I find this fussy stage to be so satisfying. You really start to see your piece come alive and come together, and it’s also quite meditative to boot. So have some fun with it and take your time. Definitely don’t rush this step, really finesse that fiddling and get lost in the Groove.

Trouble Shooting

If you’ve goofed up, no big whoop. Just add more clay if needed, resculpt, resmooth, and then try again. Oil clay gives you many times to get it right.

If your grooves and definitions and whatnot are too aggressive, that’s okay. You can tame them down with your tools with some tinkering plus we have one more round of smoothing that’ll make short order of that.

Unless it’s your style, try to avoid defining the muscles like an anatomy chart with a neat formulaic approach. Living flesh really looks quite different than an anatomy diagram. (I recommend my 2011 posts, Now About Those Anatomy Charts Parts I and II.) Really study your references to see where hints at muscles are more effective and realistic and where sharply defining your muscles is called for…the living body is a mix of those two and everything in between, a spectrum of fleshy expression.

Keep your tools and your relief cleaned of pilled clay bits and other relics generated by this stage. Just use your tool to carefully remove them and wipe them on a shop towel. I clean my tool often, for instance, often between each tool stroke if clay builds up on it.

Conclusion to Part VIII

Believe it or not, we’re almost done! It’s been quite the creative adventure so far but we’re coming to the end of it. What could possibly be next though? How do we fix all these squiggles we’ve just cut into our relief? Easy! A second smoothing session, something we’ll get to in Part IX. Stay tuned!

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

- Leo Tolstoy

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VIII

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VII

Introduction

Well, we’ve come to Part VII where we’ve completed our roughed out relief and it looks awesome! Congratulations for coming this far in this nine-part series! But there’s still a ways to go. In Parts I-VI we’ve covered everything from types of relief to tools and clay to some potholes to steer round. So what could possibly be left? Well, a lot so let’s just jump right into it…

Rough It Up

So we’ve roughed out or “rough-sculpted” our relief so now it’s time to get rougher with it…we have to “rough smooth” it to knock down all the tool marks our sculpting has left behind. This is actually a critical step in our process, one that can even change the nature of our relief if we aren’t careful. Indeed, if you notice, an intangible energy was injected into your relief during the rough-sculpting stage. It just has this “feel” to it, doesn’t it? This immediacy and, well…energy. We want to preserve that in its totality right to the end. But here’s the kicker…rough-smoothing can kill that energy if we aren’t super careful. See, rough-smoothing can rob a relief of its flair and life because there is such a thing as over-smoothing. You never want to over-smooth your relief! It’s worse than overworking because it can do so much damage that’ll take some doing to fix, to reinstall that life back into the clay. You want to avoid that. So how do we rough-smooth and how do we keep it in control? Let’s find out…

Take your little glass bowl and pop in about one tablespoon of GooGone. Now take your stiff brushes (let’s say the 2 if you’re starting on the legs, mane, tail, or face, or the 4 if you’re doing the large expanses of the torso) dip it in the GooGone, blot out the excess on a shop towel, and scrub your clay in a scrubby, “gently rough” motion, removing the tool marks. There’s definitely a learning curve with this as you want to scrub hard enough to remove the tool marks but not so hard as to mar or distort the clay. There’s a Goldilock’s Zone you’ll learn by feel soon enough. But that’s what you want to do all over your piece, smoothing it all over. Go in the direction of hair on the mane and tail and feathers, but criss-cross your scrubbing on the body, keeping that brush moving evenly all over. On the head and legs though, approach with more caution so you don’t hose up what you sculpted — be more gentle in these areas.

It’s definitely a “go by feel” method, but there are some things to avoid to ensure a good result. First, don’t soak your clay with GooGone. This is aggressive stuff that will melt your clay into a goopy mess if you aren’t careful. You want just enough on your brush to lubricate the scrubbing and no more so dabbing your brush on that shop towel is really important to blot out the excess. Second, it’s okay if there are minor brush strokes but it’s not okay if there are major brush strokes. That means you’re being too rough or using too much solvent. On the other hand, though, third, be bold. Don’t be so timid with the clay that your tool marks stubbornly remain. You shouldn’t have to work an area for too long. Remember, you don’t want to soak your clay in GooGone and the longer you work an area, the more soaked it becomes. Work fast and learn that necessary pressure to be done with an area quickly and move on. Fourth, be mindful of flatter areas so don’t focus on one place on them too long or you’ll eat a defect in their smooth, even contour. Keep that brush moving evenly and criss-crossing to avoid creating errors in your topography. Fifth, don’t keep using a gunked-up brush. See, melted clay is going to build up around your bristles and ferule which are going to be deposited onto your relief — you don’t want that. So clean your brush often in the GooGone and wiping it clean on a shop towel to then proceed. Sixth, don’t over-smooth! You want to smooth just enough to remove the tool marks, smooth areas of unwanted unevenness, and smooth hair and nothing more. You don’t want to rob your piece of its life and energy so learn when to stop and move on to another area as quickly as you can. Seventh, don’t use the same pressure all over the relief. See, you can be rougher on the body but you need to be more gentle on the face and legs and hair — learn what pressures are needed where as it’s not all the same. Eighth, don’t use just one brush movement to smooth but exploit lots of different movements to get into every nook and cranny. For example, there’s spinning your brush and circular motions that can get into certain areas better than a scrubby motion. In short, play around with your brush to find what works best to get the needed result. Ninth, don’t overlook how useful your fingers can be for smoothing tool marks on the large expanses of the body. Just make sure there’s little to no GooGone in that area and definitely don’t dip your finger in it as a lubricant. Ick. Tenth, this isn’t your final smoothing so don’t treat it as it is. This is merely to get rid of those tool marks and no more. We have another round of smoothing in store so don’t be too fussy at this stage. And tenth, don’t forget the edges or sides of your relief, those need smoothing, too.

Trouble Shooting

If you do end up over-smoothing, don’t panic. It just means you’ll have to let your piece sit for a day to calm down from the GooGone and resculpt those areas to reinstill that energy back into them. It’s extra work that could have been avoided, but at least it’s work that’s doable.

If you get goopy melted clay from your brush onto your relief, don’t worry. Just clean your brush, wipe it down on a shop towel so it’s drier, and gently brush it off your piece. Just don’t let that melted clay sit on your relief as it’ll just melt the area beneath it. Like I said, GooGone is aggressive. Treat it with respect.

If you’ve worn a patch or groove of erosion into your piece with overly aggressive scrubbing, never fear! That can happen as you learn how to work this technique. Let your piece rest from the GooGone for about twenty minutes then go back and add more clay into that area and smooth with your tool. Then go back and smooth again, being more careful this time.

Smooth Operator

And voilá — your piece has no tool marks! All gone. Doesn’t it look nice? You can really see what you did with more clarity, too. You can even go back and redo certain areas if you wish with this new clarity then resmooth. Point is, do all your big work now because now is the time to do it. 

So look at Nashat and Meddur to see how far I go with the rough-smoothing. Notice that it’s not too far? Just enough to erase those tool marks and no further. Their energy remains intact. It’s a delicate balance, but one you’ll learn quickly.

Conclusion to Part VII

So now that all the tool marks are gone…we’re done right? Nope! We have a little ways to go, but up next is the fun part, or at least it’s a fun part for me. What is it? Well, it’s the fiddly, fussy stage of sculpting which we’ll get into in Part VIII. 

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

- Francis Bacon

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VII

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VI

Introduction

We’re back at it in this nine-part series about my own methods for sculpting relief work. In Parts I, II, III, IV, and V we’ve covered everything from history to tools to The Deepening to squishing our sticky-outy blobs on there, and now it’s time for actual sculpting in this Part VI! So let’s just get right to it!…

It’s Smooshing Time!

As someone who’s been sculpting relief work since the early 90s, just over thirty years ago (yikes!), I can distill this step down into one simple concept: You just smoosh clay around until it looks right. That’s literally all it is. That’s the best I can offer. Add more clay where you need it, take clay away where you need to, and just smoosh it all around until it looks right to you. And how right is proportional to how long you’ve been doing this — it’s all experience. 

So my next best I can offer is: Just keep at it. Despite all the challenges and daunting nature of it, just keep at it. Yes, it’s going to see like a huge, impossible task. Yes, there are going to be ugly stages you have to power through. Yes, it’s going to be intimidating and scary. Yes, you’re going to make mistakes. But you’ve got to finish what you start and move onto the next piece to gain more experience. And just chip away at it, little by little. You don’t have to tackle the whole thing at once. And making mistakes is how we learn, there’s no avoiding them. In fact, they’re your best teachers. And don’t worry about making mistakes as oil clay is very forgiving so every hiccup is an easy enough fix. You totally got this!

So instead of me trying to instruct you how to sculpt in the inert format of a blog, instead why don’t we talk about how many folks go haywire when they’re sculpting and some trouble shooting so you can figure out where you went wrong and how to fix it. So to that end…

Using the wrong tools: Many people haven’t experimented enough with tools to find the right fit for them so they just struggle continuously with a tool that’s a poor fit for them. Then frustrated, they quit. Don’t do that. Try lots of different tools and there are hordes of them out there to play with. Myself? I like this tool, a glorified stick with a thicker end and a skinnier end. 

I use it to define and spread and smoosh the clay around, pushing it around until it makes the right formations and contours. But I know many artists who prefer a more pointed tool like a sharpened pencil or a more rounded tool like the end of a paint brush. Many use loop tools in a more subtractive approach. So it’s entirely up to your preferences. There is no wrong tool if it fits you. And don’t forget your fingers! If the scale of your piece allows it, your fingers can be the best tools ever.

Getting overwhelmed: Too many beginners think they have to work on the entire piece all at once and quickly become exhausted by the sheer magnitude of it all. I would be, too. Instead, I recommend picking a place — any place — and starting there and then working outwards in any direction you want to go. I’m right-handed, so I generally start on a body part to the left of the piece and work my way across, going right, so I don’t smoosh what I just did. If you’re left-handed, that might be the opposite direction. Or maybe you’d like to start on the face and work outwards from there which is fine, too. There’s no wrong place to start — just start. And never feel like you have to do it all at once. Babystepping and piecemealing can often get you to the finish line with more sanity at the end.

Forgetting layers: It’s easy to get wrapped up in a portion of the body that fascinates us and then building it up or carving it down too much in relation to the rest of the body. Like I’ve seen eyes that were much too protruding or nostril rims sculpted like volcanoes or joints that were much too bulbous or “reversed” layers between the forequarter and hindquarter only because the artist forgot about the relationships between the layers. We have to remember The Flattening effect and all the relationships it creates between the layers. An easy trick then is to view your relief edgewise on the tile to see the topography of your piece as it really is…which parts are sticking out the most — are they the correct bits and are they sticking out at the right amount? Now yes, if you had to break rules, this doesn’t apply, but overall it’s still a nifty hack if you get stuck when something doesn’t look quite right. More times than not, it’s wonky topography that’s throwing our Eye off.

Carving in too deeply: Remember these things need to cast well! If we carve into things too deeply we’re going to tear our molds, like carving too much into ears, nostrils, or in the mane and tail or feathers. Make sure the silicone can pull well out of every portion you sculpt. But this caution also goes for muscle grooves. Oil clay is so nice to work with, yes, but a good sculpture, a realistic sculpture, is a study of not just accuracy but of restraint, too. Restraint in now extreme things are actually expressed. It’s so easy to really carve in those muscle delineations because of that wonderful clay, but dial it back. Always think of realism first. But likewise, don’t be shy with that clay either. Capturing depth and dimension is about really knowing when and where to be bold so…be bold. Use your directional light to help you match the accurate shadows and highlights to better gauge how effectively you’re sculpting your design.

Use your references religiously: It’s so easy to go off-track when sculpting a relief because that clay is so squishy and unwanted distortions can happen rather quickly. Use your calipers often with your references, too, making constant comparisons as you work. You can even poke into your clay with them to mark a reference point. And have a good anatomical chart handy because you may have to use it to decipher what you’re seeing in your photos, information you need to know for your relief, especially if you get stuck. You can even draw the anatomical features or structural relationships into your clay as guides, something I do a lot as I work. Just look at Nashat and Meddur when I did this. Trust me, a relief will teach you a lot about anatomy, conformation, and breed type in a short time because a relief can look wonky a lot faster than a 3D sculpture!

Getting confused and scared: If you start to get intimidated, break the relief down to smaller bites and then break those smaller bites down into the most basic shapes and relationships. In fact, break everything down into the most basic shapes and relationships and trust the process to marry them all together. The head and joints and the legs can be real trouble spots for beginners in this regard, so just break them down into the most basic components you can and restart that way. See, the thing is with the angles we might choose to sculpt in — like 3/4 angles and whatnot — things can look really confusing and weird. Trust the process. Sculpt what you see in your references and your design no matter how weird the shape or orientation — it will make sense in the end. And never forget, you can always go back and retweak areas that end up not fitting. Oil clay will always let you do that.

Overworking an area: Oh my gosh, this is so easy to do! But resist the urge to keep spinning your wheels with an area. Walk away. Develop a fresh eye and come back to it later. See, the thing is, if you’re spinning your wheels with some portion of your relief it’s because there’s probably something wrong and that area is trying to tell you that. So you’re essentially trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Or perhaps your skillset isn’t quite ready to tackle that bit yet. It happens. So move onto another part and work out from there for a while. Just switch gears but keep moving forwards. You can always come back to that problem area later. Or perhaps there’s a systemic problem that has culminated in that particular portion of your relief. If you suspect that’s the case, refer back to your references and your drawing to suss out the problem. Or it could be that area is giving you fits because it’s actually a surrounding area that’s off which is forcing the issue. Or maybe we’re just exhausted and need to take a break. That happens, too. Go do something else for a while — you need to be working on your relief in joy, not drudgery.

Getting lost in the process: It’s also easy to lose our way as we sculpt a relief because the distortions can be so extreme and unfamiliar. Indeed, all the familiar topography of the horse we know so habitually is made quite foreign through a relief’s flattened perspective. In fact though, this is actually a great aspect of relief because it can break our formulas and habitual interpretations by forcing us to See things quite differently. A relief can really freshen your Sight in this way. Nevertheless, how do we find our way out after getting lost? Well, refer back to your references and your drawing then visualize in your head what the area is supposed to look like on your relief and imagine yourself sculpting it. What angles would you have to hold your tool? How would the clay have to be smooshed to mimic the structures? What layer are you working on and is it in proper relationship to the other layers? Draw on your relief if you have to to clarify structures. Again, break things down to basic shapes and relationships and visualize them on your relief then proceed to sculpt it. Overall, stepping back, taking a breath, and visualizing where you need to go first can often light the way. Above all, trust the process to make it all make sense in the end.

Being timid: Be bold! Smoosh that clay around, you don’t have to be gentle. In fact, the more you work the clay, the better it works so don’t be shy with it. When I work, I’m really smearing it around to shape things, carving stuff off, scraping stuff off, and adding stuff on. It’s all very fluid and organic. Like take a look at Nashat and Meddur and you can actually see how I’ve drawn my tool over them to achieve the contours. So don’t think you only have to just carve way — add where you need it because you may indeed need more in certain areas as you work. Like I keep a blob of warm clay squished onto my tile as a reservoir for needed clay. You never know when some little blob will be the right touch to an area and I want it in quick, easy reach. 

Be responsive to the needs of the illusion expressed in the relief then and know that you can go back and forth as many times as you wish. And don’t worry about toolmarks right now — make them! Tool marks are actually really beautiful things that speak to the process and your creative energy so savor them while you can.

Being too aggressive: On the other hand, learn the feel of the clay as quickly as you can. Why? Because if you’re too aggressive, you’re going to cause rips and tears, crumbling and crumpling in your clay. What you want do achieve is a smooth smearing effect that’ll smooth nicely later with solvents.

Not cleaning your work as you go: When you’re using those loop tools, clean up those tailings as you sculpt. Don’t let them pile up in a big mess to get in your way. Likewise, clean your tools often so they don’t become gunked up with clay. Similarly, clean up all that little pilling that can build up, too, especially in the mane and tail. You don’t want those melting into your relief when you do your smoothings to mar those areas. Keep things as clean and gunk free as possible as you work.

Not taking breaks: Seriously - take breaks periodically if just to step back and evaluate what you’re doing. If you power through too fast you’re going to make mistakes, create distortions, and cut corners — don’t do that. Take your time and pace yourself. Sculpting a relief is methodical work so respect the process.

Misplaced focus: Keep in mind that this first go at sculpting is only the first stage of sculpting, the “rough-sculpting” stage. In this, you’re getting the relief prepped for finessing later. In other words, don’t focus on details and textures just yet at this stage, just keeping your focus on the anatomy, precision, perspective, and correct Flattening and Deepening aspects of it. Save the detailing and finagling for later — we’ll get to it, yes, but later.

Hairy Territory

Okay so yay! You’ve finished the body and it turned out so cool! Great job! But now we have to add the mane, tail, or feathers, things which I do after the fact. It’s just a quirk of mine I suppose because you can sculpt yours right along with the body if you wish, it’s up to you. Now I often don’t really have an idea of what to do with the mane and tail until I’m done with the body and the relief has told me what it wants. Another quirk of mine I guess. Either which way, I like to take a mechanical pencil and draw on the target configuration right onto the tile as a guide which lets me work things out ahead of time. Like take a look at Nashat and Meddur with their penciled in manes and tails. Then I take my warmed, squishy clay, smoosh it on there and sculpt away. It’s really quite fluid and spontaneous.

Now there are many ways to sculpt hair convincingly so the way you like to do is the right way for you. For this, it’s a good idea to study how other artists sculpt hair to get some ideas but make sure you adapt to a method that’s comfortable and expressive of you and your style. And keep this in mind — as you sculpt you can always change your mind. Your penciled in mane and tail aren’t dogma! Like on Nashat, notice how I didn’t input that flipped up hair at his withers? At the last moment, I opted to omit that as I thought it made for a stronger design to omit it. Never be afraid to change your mind with your relief’s design on the fly. It’s one thing to see your relief drawn out on a piece of paper and quite another to have it made real in clay so what works on paper doesn’t always work in clay. Or perhaps your relief wants to be a certain way quite different from your design and that’s okay, too. Listen to your piece, always. Almost always when you do, a stronger composition will result. I don’t know how that works, but it does.

Here's Meddur's mane and tail blobbed in so you can see how spontaneous and roughed out they start. I'm not timid here...just get that clay on there. I used my fingers, shaping the blobs into snakes and jamming them onto the tile firmly. Just make sure all the tendrils have "a pathway to the back," unless you want to sculpt them more "in the round." Then I'll just sculpt them, making any changes along the way because I find that manes and tails often evolve as you create them. I actually find manes and tails the most difficult part of the whole process because capturing randomized passive physics, while still flattering the overall composition, is a tricky dance. It's fun though, but it can be a real challenge at times.

Trouble Shooting

When you think you’re done at this stage, trust me, you’re not. Take a picture of your piece with your phone and look at it through the objectifying lens for a fresh look. Even better, pop it into a photo editing program on your computer for a bigger view. Flip it over horizontally for a fresh look. Or look at your piece regularly in a mirror, reversed, and don’t forget to inspect it upside down, too. And compare this photo to your references and drawing — do they match? And always check your work under directional lighting to make sure those planes and dimensions synch with your references. Keep doing all this until that piece is just so then you’re finally ready to move onto the next step.

Huzzah!

So now you’ve done all that and you made all your corrections and ta-da…you’re finished! You’ve sculpted out your relief — you did it! You tackled some challenges and you saw your way through it — great job! But you aren’t done yet. See, you just finished what I refer to as the rough-sculpted stage, the first stage of sculpting. We'll have another go at sculpting but only after we knock down all those tool marks which we have to smooth out first. 

So here are Nashat and Meddur rough sculpted so you can get an idea of how far I go with this stage. It’s pretty far. But note that there are no details really and a lot of the texture isn’t present. Those are things we’ll get to later.

Conclusion to Part VI

You’ve come a long way, you! Super job! Look what you did — appreciate that! Pat yourself on the back. You created something that didn’t exist before — how cool is that?! But we still have a ways to go which we’ll get to in Part VII. Meanwhile, savor your moment! Always savor every creative win as each one represents a personal triumph in some way. Be proud of what you accomplished! You’ve earned it! 

So in Part VII we’ll discuss how to get rid of all those tool marks so just hang tight! Until next time then…job well done!

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

- Vincent Van Gogh

Flat Out Fun: Sculpting In Relief Part VI