First sculpt and am in desperate need of advice.

Hi there I'm looking for some advice on adding wrinkles to my gorilla head sculpt.
My big problem is I carve in my wrinkle lines and then use a brush and water to smooth them out after blending them as best I can with my wooden tools.
This is where the problem starts I seem to be washing most of the detail away even though I'm using a small soft brush with not a lot of water.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

pics or it didn't happen.

I would try less water than what your using now. Not sure how much "not a lot" is, but less water seems like the right step forward. Try dampening your brush to the point where you like "is this thing even wet?" and then try to smooth them out. If that does nothing then make it a tiny bit damper.

Rinse and repeat until it all smooths out..(pun intended)

What kind of clay are you using btw?

Try rolling clay "worms" to create hills and valleys for 3D effect . So in between two wrinkle lines add a worm of clay then smooth. Many people have great success with this technique. Jordu Schell states that he picked this up from Rick Baker. It can be quite a look. Try layering them and all sorts of combinations. Good luck

Your using an oil based clay right?? I'm no expert but I'm using a technique on Bob that works for me.
I use cling film! I apply it to the surface pressing very lightly & I use a brush to push it into shapes on the surface. I then carve my line, dot my dot etc & peel the film off.
I found it frustrating that if you carve a line etc without film, the displaced clay forms a raised area on either side of your cut. With the film in place as you push into the clay you push the film in aswell & the displaced clay doesnt form those raised areas.
I have found as time has gone by that I dont use the cling film as much as I used to & I've started to just blend stuff in with the tools or use the tools in a way that has the desired effect
I've only been at this for a year & have alot to learn myself yet.
I also found some usefull vids on youtube
HTH

The quality of my sculpting went up a lot after I started using one of these to sculpt. It's like a brush made of rubber. great for wrinkles and folds.

I Hope this works, first time responding with Multi quotes...
If it messes up my apologies...

Jessica said:

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pics or it didn't happen.

Some pic's will be coming soon for you Jessica

SMOKE said:

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I would try less water than what your using now. Not sure how much "not a lot" is, but less water seems like the right step forward.

What kind of clay are you using btw?

Thanks for the advice SMOKE i'll try less water... Not a lot seemed to explain small amounts well at the time
WED clay

AMPETITE said:

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Try rolling clay "worms" to create hills and valleys for 3D effect .
Jordu Schell states that he picked this up from Rick Baker.

Thanks AMPETITE if this works for Rick Baker and Jordu i'm trying it!

Leigh said:

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I use cling film! I apply it to the surface pressing very lightly & I use a brush to push it into shapes on the surface. I then carve my line, dot my dot etc & peel the film off.
I found it frustrating that if you carve a line etc without film, the displaced clay forms a raised area on either side of your cut.
HTH

Awesome, thanks Leigh. I'm trying this to see what effects i can get!...

Durrett said:

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The quality of my sculpting went up a lot after I started using one of these to sculpt. It's like a brush made of rubber. great for wrinkles and folds.

Fantastic! going to order one of them and check out the results thanks Durrett.

Thanks all of you for all your advice.
Loads of great techniques and tools to try.

If anyone else wants to throw ideas into the mix of what works for them when sculpting wrinkles or other fleshy details, please fire away I'm sure loads of noob's like myself will find this useful.

I dont know if the cling film method will work with WED clay it might just make a mess of your surface????
If your on a really tight budget (like me ) you can make your own rubber tipped tools with some old paint brushes & a pencil eraser

wed is suuuper soft, and is the majority of why the water is messing you up. wed is really for speed sculpts and throwaway. If you want to really get down and dirty pick up some monster makers clay. Im sure 90% of the guys on here can vouch for its awesomeness.

From what I hear monster makers is awesome stuff. I use nsp chavant medium and couldn't be happier. It's a close cheaper alternative to monster makers.

I've never worked with the medium you are using. For one of my ape masks I used what they had at the art store at the time, which was Klean Klay but it was super soft. Really hard to work with I found out but it was what I had so I had to make it work. I also didn't realize that it came in different hardnesses. Now I just use this clay to make walls for my 1:6 molding.

Thanks once again for all the info' I do have some Monster makers clay it came included when I bought one of their mask making kits, but I found it a little tough to use as this is my first time sculpting anything.

I am going to try out all the various suggestions: the rubber tool, The carved pencil eraser, the Cling Film with the WED and will let you know my results.

In the meantime here are some cell phone pics of what i have done so far looking forward to starting in on weekend 2.... Come on Friday!

First time posting images so bear with me if this doesn't work!

Thats impressive!! to say the least

Oh now I see what you mean! I think one of the tricks I learned to get rid of those little bits of excess clay is to dust baby powder on a soft paint brush and work it off of your sculpt. I'm not sure if this would work with what clay you are using, but when I used Klean Klay it worked for me.

Leigh said:

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Thats impressive!! to say the least

WOW, thanks Leigh that's high praise indeed I've been following your Bob project and after seeing that I know I still have a ways to to.

Jessica said:

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Oh now I see what you mean! I think one of the tricks I learned to get rid of those little bits of excess clay is to dust baby powder on a soft paint brush and work it off of your sculpt. I'm not sure if this would work with what clay you are using, but when I used Klean Klay it worked for me.

Hi Jessica thanks for the tip... How did you find out that the powder helps to remove the little clay lumps.

I do have a couple of questions for you...

Does the powder dry out the sculpt?
Should I do this as a last step before casting?

Thanks Jessica, I'll check out the link.

Oh...forgot to mention that I ended up using a very soft brush to brush off the clay dregs because at the time, I did not have canned air. A deft touch worked wonders.

take some canned air flip it upside down and freeze the little excess clay. then just brush it off. stan winston trick

IRONFETT said:

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take some canned air flip it upside down and freeze the little excess clay. then just brush it off. stan winston trick

Indeed.

Awesome!

Thanks to all of you for this latest round of tips, I'm looking forward to trying all of them out this weekend.

88OrBust did you purchase the Stan Winston stream that example clip was from. if so what did you think of it?
I've been looking at buying some of the streaming content but haven't got around to trying any of the lessons out yet.

So I finished the sculpt this weekend... will post pics soon!

I found that the baby powder suggestion didn't work so well with WED clay (could possibly be the way i was doing it)

The cling wrap worked great and so did the worms of clay techniques.

I never got the chance to try the compressed air upside down but will give that a shot next time.

Thanks once again for all your help with the sculpt. Now i'm going to be asking for help with moulding. I've never moulded anything before and have never used fiberglass ever.

So i'm off to do some research as to what to coat the sculpt with so it releases and look for fiberglass 101 online.

Many thanks again to everyone who helped me with this, its much appreciated.

MMCD said:

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Thanks once again for all the info' I do have some Monster makers clay it came included when I bought one of their mask making kits, but I found it a little tough to use as this is my first time sculpting anything.

I am going to try out all the various suggestions: the rubber tool, The carved pencil eraser, the Cling Film with the WED and will let you know my results.

In the meantime here are some cell phone pics of what i have done so far looking forward to starting in on weekend 2.... Come on Friday!

First time posting images so bear with me if this doesn't work!

Oh very nice indeed. You're certainly on the right road judging by what I'm seeing here.

I myself usually try and steer clear of too much water and as you've found out the old clingfilm trick works quite well depending on what you're trying to do.

Also the thickness of the plastic film will create different effects. You will have to experiment. Sorry the baby powder did not work well for your medium of choice. I was using Klean Klay as the medium when I did the baby powder trick.