Welcome back to this nine-part series on how I sculpt a relief. In this series I’m walking you through how I create them with my own media, tools, and techniques hoping that you’ll find something useful for your own work. In Part I we talked about some backstory and tricks to help us along while in Part II I showed you what tools and clay I use. So from hereon out, starting in this Part III, I’ll be showing you what I do with Meddur, a cavorting Amazigh stallion, and Nashat, a trotting Arabian stallion as illustrations of some of my points. So let’s start sculpting! Whoo hoo!
The Blob
Unwrap your clay and put it on an old ceramic or glass plate or bowl and warm it under a drafting lamp with an incandescent bulb. Pull the lamp bell down so it envelops the clay best you can but just make sure the clay is clear of the bulb as you don’t want clay melting onto it.
Or better yet, pop your clay into a clay warmer/hot box you can buy or make. Don’t try to squish the hard, cold clay onto the tile! Not only is it literally impossible, but you’ll injure yourself or break the tile. Clay is a lot harder to work than you think, especially when it’s fresh.
While that’s softening, make a simple line drawing out of your concept on the printer paper. We’re going to use this drawing to trace our design onto the clay. (Make a copy of this drawing for reference if we feel we’ll need that later.) Make sure it has basic indications of major muscle groups, hooves, and cranial features but we don’t need a mane or tail yet so we can ignore that for now. Or not…it’s up to you. I just find it’s easier to pop on the mane and tail later.
Then once the clay is softened (about 30 minutes to an hour...be careful, it might be quite hot), squish the warm clay blobs onto your tile forming a flattened blob, smooshing the little blobs out until they’re more or less even. I suggest using your thumb to do the squishing here as it’s the strongest of your fingers. You may have to do this is phases because as your clay cools, it’ll harden so just pop it under the lamp or in your warmer again and proceed when it’s soft. This is actually the hardest part of starting a relief, so just keep at it slowly but surely so you don’t exhaust or hurt your hands. (Also, make your blob about 1” larger around than your drawn out design, which you’ll cut out later.)
Then while the clay is still fresh (like don’t wait for the next day to do this step), take a medium-sized rake tool to level out the clay on the tile, creating a slate of flat clay. Be mindful of an even depth and don’t make your piece too thin but also not too thick. You want something in the ballpark of about 5-7mm thick for a piece about 10-14cm in diameter, or about .25” thick for a piece about 4-6” in diameter. So make your adjustments to end up with an even, level blob of clay on your tile. This can take some doing, so take your time. And don’t try to use a dough roller to level out your clay — clay is a lot more resistant than you think! You’ll just break your tile.
So now you have this leveled clay blob on your tile. Now what? Welp, take your drawing and with a pencil, trace your design on the clay slab. You can even use a color pencil so you can see where you’ve already traced over. Just don’t press too hard or your punch through the paper, but press just enough to transfer your design onto your clay. Now if you pop through a few times as you learn that pressure, no biggie, it won’t hurt your relief. You just don’t want to make a habit of that as you’ll jam paper pieces in your clay you’ll have to pick out. It’s all by feel so be mindful. Once you’ve traced your entire design on the clay, pull off the paper and voilá — there’s your design on the clay.
Now take that drywall 1” knife and press down, perpendicular to the clay, to cut your design out, staying about 1-2mm away from the actual outline of your design. What you’re doing now is just rough-cutting it out to remove the bulk of excess clay. We want to do this because the removal of all that extra clay makes the finessed cutting out all the easier and more precise.
So once you do that, take your fine blade tool and cutting perpendicular to the clay, cut out your design carefully, watching your fingers and hands as you go. It’ll take some learning to discover the correct pressure and finesse to release your design without cutting into it by accident, but you’ll learn it quick enough. So now you have your design cut out in your clay slab. Good work!
Trouble Shooting
If you accidentally cut into your piece, no problem! Just squish around the clay to fix it and continue.
If you accidentally cut off a leg or ear, no worries! Just squish it back into place and press in "anchoring tabs" along the side onto the tile to anchor it down. Then squish the broken ends together to fix it and continue. You can clean up the edges later or on the waste casting.
When you're using the drywall knives, hold your body portions down with a finger while you pull those knives up and out otherwise you might pull up your legs or head or whatnot from the tile if the knife catches them. The clay can be sticky so that can happen if it sticks to the drywall knife. But if that does happen, don't worry...just reattach them to the tile using that anchoring tab technique, making sure everything is aligned properly first.
Don't rush this step, take your time. If you start rushing things you're going to make mistakes and make a mess of things when you want to be as careful, precise, and tidy as possible.
Watch where your fingers and hands are when you're doing the fine cutting. Keep them well out of the way if the blade were to skip its tracks. You absolutely don't want some accident to stab you...trust me on this.
If you accidentally cut off too much, nothing to worry about! Just take more clay, squish it on there and reshape best you can. You can fix its accuracy later. Even better, you can just take the cut-off part and resquish it back on. No big whoop. Oil clay is so easy to work with!
If your fine cutting knife keeps getting stuck try rocking it back and forth while drawing it along your line. That often helps move it along. You'll soon learn to do this with enough finesse to create a nice line all the same.
If your fine cutting knife still keeps getting stuck because the clay is rather thick, just cut down half way first along your line, then do a second pass for the final later afterwards.
Alternate Approach
There's always the option of drawing your concept right onto the tile with a pencil and simply pressing softened clay blobs onto that, building it up to the proper thickness, in the ballpark shape of your design. That way you don't really have to make a bigger blob and have to cut your design out of it. It's up to you.
Conclusion to Part III
Phew! You’ve done a lot so far but there’s still way more to go! In Part IV then we’ll attend to The Deepening, of establishing perspective, which is a major deal but super fun. It’ll just make your design pop so much in your clay and you’ll start to see it come alive for the first time! So cool! Until next time then…keep squishing that clay!
“Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done."
- Ruth Asawa