34. Sculpting miniatures...

Warning! This post can be disturbingly long!

Without a long an meaningless introduction, I just start here: A little after I started painting miniatures, I felt the need to try out sculpting. But as it looks way harder than painting (at least if the result should be more or less acceptable), I had to find something, that’s easy to do. Human figures are obviously not that, because the body proportions has to be correct, the face has to look good, and there are a lot of small details… So actually it’s maybe the worst thing to start with. But I you find the worst case, you just have to invert it, to find the best! So what’s the inverse here? It has to be big, faceless, and with arbitrary proportions. Basically a formless blub… Okay, it would be easy for sure, but I wanted maybe a bit more refined thing… Something humanoid, with hands and legs, but without undefined proportions (and face). Actually an earth elemental (or rock golem) is quite a good start, because its simply some kind of humanoid form, with rocky surface! Like this one (from DevianArt):

My idea was to make a pose, that’s not completely static, but also not too difficult: a small step, and one hand lifted, as it would strike something. I had no clue how to start, so I just took toothpicks and air drying clay. From the toothpicks I made a simple frame: broken to the proper size, and gluing together with superglue (not the best idea...). Next I started to add clay on it, until it looked okayish. After hardening, I simply glued stones on it, first some bigger ones and filled the gaps with small gravel. There I realized, that it would have been better, to press the stones in the soft clay, because that way they would look more integrated… Too late for me. Anyway, I found some sharp stones, to make a pick-axe like weapon arm, and some small longish ones for fingers on the other. I glued a nice, diamond shaped stone on the spot, where I would imagine the elementals forehead. At the end, I removed some stones, to have two small holes, where the eyes could/should be.

After priming, a quick and easy paintjob: some different shades of grey on the stones, some different washes over it and then some dry-brushing (zenital drybrushing at the end, with the lightest color at the end). I wanted glowing eyes (and also to try out object source lightning), so I painted the eyeholes from inside out (white-yellow-orange), and then drybrushed orange around the eyes, always away from them. After drying, it put some greens on it: tufts and flocks. I like the look of it, but for a more golem-, and not an elemental-like creature this step should be missed. At the end, the obligatory baseing-rim painting-varnishing, this is what I got:

The next level was to make something more impressive, but not much more complex. And at time I was searching for an affordable treeman to serve as a giant in my wifes elven army (like Fangorn in Lord of the Rings):

My genius brain connected those two problems (with a little help of a topic about sculpting a treeman on Leadadventures forum…)! The plan for the pose was similar as before: a small step (ents doesn’t hurry anyway), with one lightly raised hand. This time I made the frame of steel wire (better then toothpick, but not the best) with a hot glue gun. After fine tuning of the pose, I added pressed tinfoil around it. It’s a nice material for filling the core of the sculpt, easy to use, and cheap. Next step was covering all with a layer of air drying clay, and texturing it with a piece of bark. It was pretty hard to make, because the frame wasn’t stiff enough… So it would have been better using two layers of clay: one for a hard core, and the next one for the texture. I was so in the flow, that I didn’t want to wait, so I quickly baked the clay, glued some twigs on it, primed it with PVA+craft paint and did a quick drybrush. I had mixed feelings about the result. I liked the pose, but the texture was pretty ugly…

Next day I carved some bark-like pattern with a knife in it, and painted it again (after priming again). It was worth the time, because it looked much better! After a lot of trying different colors, washes and dry brushes, I had a dark brown bark with a greyish accent (a bit too dark maybe), with some greenish tone on the lower parts (lichen, moss, such things). It wasn’t bad, but too plain, so I sculpted different mushrooms and a hornets nest on the tree, added the foliage (moss), the beard (another type of moss) and some dried vines (because if the treeman moves, it has to tear out their roots). Then I amber colored eyes (go for the eyes Boo!) out of Milliput balls. While fixing the foliage (saturating with watered down PVA glue), a was missing something… The treeman was just walking around careless, but it has to be in battle! He obviously needed a weapon... As a man sized stone can be a practicable (and affordable) weapon for such a big fellow, I glued a stone in its lamer succeeded hand with even more branches around it (like it would hold that). And it was done! No, it wasnt! I found an owl between my spare bits (from Frostgrave Wizard set), I painted it as a snow owl, and glued on a comfortable looking branch. Its not the best treeman on the world, but I think its also not the worst one, and that’s enough to make me happy:

Some details:

My technical faults while the whole sculpting projects:

• Use a proper frame: toothpicks are just wrong, and steel wire is too hard to bend and cut, and has way too much springback. Aluminium or copper wire should be a lot better.
• Use a proper handle: just make one leg longer, and glue it in a piece of XPS foam (in a form that can be held in hand and also doesn’t fall off on the table). It’s much easier to handle it this way.
• Using tinfoil: actually its quite a good filler, but it has to be pressed really strong together to avoid the springy nature, and don’t use too much, because then your clay layer can be too thin, or the form can be too chunky.
• Using clay: the first layer don’t has to have texture, it’s only a hard underlayer for the next one, with texture. And it has to be hardened out, but the impatients (like me) can accelerate this in oven (100C for 15 minutes should be enough for a thin layer).
• Adding layers: add rather less material at once, because adding more is easier than removing if it’s too much.
• Texturing: the model has to be hard under the textured layer, otherwise it’s almost impossible to make it. And maybe Milliput or green stuff serves better for that as clay.
• Lube your tools: if its dry, it sticks. Water helps, but some greasy cream should be better. But remember to degrease it before priming!

Making these is nice, but how to use them in Oathmark or Frosgrave? Next week...