I’ve decided to start this blog to document my progress of sculpting miniatures. So far I haven’t done any completed figures, mostly just studies. I started with some heads about a month ago.
Head Practice
To practice, I place a little Procreate epoxy putty (my sculpting putty of choice) onto some copper wire and stick it into a wine cork. Then I let the putty cure in my homemade oven before adding some putty to sculpt with. The wine cork is great because it’s easy to grab and with a twist of the wrist I am easily able to see the sculpture from different angles.
These studies are a lot of fun to do and one of my next tasks is to get them down to scale. I’m aiming to do some 30 mm figures and right now it seems that all the work I do is a bit big for that scale.
I’m also doing some anatomy studies of the figure. Here is one that I did this past week:
Anatomy Study
Soldering Armature
To get the armature made, I use the same 18 gauge wire that I bought at a local Dick Blick art store. I solder some joints (very badly) and then with some pliers, bend the armature into a pose.
Anatomy Study (back)
To lay in the mass, I’m following the examples of Bruno Lucchesi in his book, “Modeling the Figure in Clay”. In it, he starts with an armature, then sculpts the skeleton and finally adds the muscle. For me, it’s a great way to learn the shape of the skeleton and see how the muscles are connected. I hope to do more of these in the coming weeks.
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