Magic Sculpt.. Apoxie Sculpt..

Hello all... My question is about painting either of the above materials. I've read reviews that state painting the Apoxie Sculpt is next to impossible, as the paint, even with primer, pulls away from the surface with little effort..

Anyone have any experience, bad or good, with painting this stuff? I'm leaning toward Magic sculpt but I have not been able to find many reviews on painting it. I know the gallery shots on their website shows lots of painted figures.. so.. I don't know.

Getting ready to purchase and would prefer not buying something that is going to give me fits with painting.

Thank you in advance!

Never had a problem with Apoxie Sculpt on anything I've ever used it with...ever. I can't recommend it enough. I mean, you wouldn't want to use it before it's cured but it can be painted while it is still tacky and I'm sure that'll help with adhesion if you're apprehensive about it. The only thing I will say about it is that it's far better for sharp, "hard-edge'' geometric shapes than it is for sculpting "soft-edge" organic shapes.

Beyond that, Iso-propyl (closest you can get to or 100%) is recommended if you want to "sculpt" the material before hand, works just like the Ave's Apoxie Solvent but cheaper and can be found anywhere.

Never worked with Magic Sculpt but I hear similar good things. However, ever since I started using Apoxie Sculpt, it's been a staple in my materials. I honestly don't know how I made anything before I found it.

Thanks so much, Poopa. The info about the hard edged versus the softer, organic sculpts really helped. I'm wondering now, if I should just research air dry clay, and go from there. I've extensive experience with supersculpey, ladoll, paperclay, permier, etc. Didn't want to have to bake this, and hate how sculpey paints. Again, a bump and the paint comes right off. The paperclays are wonderful, thought the learning curve was interesting. One has to learn a different way of working with the material, but once you get the hang of it, it will take adding on of wet pieces to dry, etc. Paints wonderfully, and light.. Difficult to break even small pieces one thoroughly dried. Sorry.. just sort of went off on a paperclay thread!

thank you again..

No problem. Another thing to note is that Apoxie has roughly a 2.5 hour work time before you feel it lose its tackiness and elasticity (some prefer this phase) and it's workable in about 4 to 5 hours, though I always let sit over-night before tooling it.

I've given up air-dry clays. They're never strong enough once cured to do anything with and, despite my love of Super Sculpey, once that's baked, not much else to do with it afterwards. Like you said, it doesn't take paint very well and it's only just slightly more robust than regular Sculpey and that just crumbles if there's a breeze. In my search for the ideal clay, I wound up just leaving it behind and kept working with oil clays and when I'm done with it, I just mold and cast resin copies.

Never worked with Paperclay but seeing what can be done with it (all the puppets in The Little Prince were done in Paperclay), it is impressive for what it is.

Thanks once more for that information.. good to know. In researching today, I arrived at much the same conclusion: mold and case resin copies. Don't know if you are familiar with Brick in the Yard, but I watched a video today on painting resin over on Youtube, and they put the primer into the mold and then poured the resin. The primer then is bonded to the resin and they "say" takes paint very well. I'm also going to try my hand at working with either HydroStone, Tufstone, winterstone, and or Densite for some castings. I'm pretty pumped.

Unless you need it to be in a gypsum cement, I would just recommend using silicone to make your molds and resin for castings. It's a tricky thing, at least for me, to cast something rigid with a rigid mold. It's a good place to start and it's all simple stuff (most stuff mixes 1:1 and cleans well enough) and you can get trial kits from Smooth-On or Reynold's Advanced Materials. I'd look into stuff like Rebound or Mold-Star for rubbers and Smooth-Cast, if I were you.

And safety first! Wear gloves, goggle, and a respirator, even when in a well-ventilated environment when working with this stuff. Be it the gypsum cement, and especially, the resin!

Thanks! I'll try to post progress pics. Yes, regarding flexible molds, that seems the way to go.