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.”