Part 1 How to start a standing figure sculpture in water clay without an armature

today I'm going to start a standing figure sculpture and I'm going to show you how you can start a standing sculpture with water-based clay with very minimal Hardware so I'm going to build my sculpture this way and it might seem a little bit more odd because remember clay weighs a lot and you build it up like this but the problem is with water clay without any sort of Armature is that it tends to kind of wobble around so the way I do it I put like this prong on the back of the sculpture and that generally keeps the sculpture nice and firm and I can still move it around until it hardens up when it hardens up we simply just remove this and we can get the sculpture fired so very simply this is just two pieces of pipe and I put a little bit of a weld in the middle you don't have to weld it you could actually use one of those teas and have the same sort of effect but the reason I welded this together is that afterwards I put these little screws on here and if you undo it you can see I can remove the pipe out and in and this doesn't cost very much it's only a few dollars and I keep reusing this over and over now I'm not a great welder so this weld is horrible looking they do have various types of sculpt sculpture armatures that hold your clay up when you're doing this but I found that this is probably the cheapest unscrew it and then I have another bolt here and I've had this for a year so so after I am done with the sculpture I actually remove this bit and then I have the pipe left over but this is such a good way of doing because I can move it around and when I want to finally get this out I just undo this slide this out out of the sculpture and voila going down to the base I have a standard wood type of Base but I put a piece of like a trash bag on top and I just taped it the reason I put a bag nowadays on the sculptures is that when you have your water-based Clay on a piece of plastic like this when the plastic or when the clay shrinks the water evaporates it kind of like moves the plastic and it doesn't crack your sculpture so I'm sure you guys have seen me use this clay before and I'll be showing you a little bit more I'm using kind of waste clay a lot so this is the clay that I've used in the previous one oftentimes two this stuff is already kind of dry so I need to make sure that it gets a little bit wetter before I can start using it I like to do for the bases I really like to start out with new clay and I'm about to take one to two inches worth of this clay and just put it as my base I just want to make sure that I get a good start here and then slice it off so I am going to plop it right over here now I want to figure out where the legs are going to be so it's about here so that's the beauty of this pipe you can kind of move it to the front but that also means that you have to be aware that it might be also in the way so there is a downside of this system is that as you're sculpting the back this is going to be in the way a bit but that's a small sacrifice for this sort of system just where the feet are going to be I'm looking at my model and the way I tend to go about it is that I will actually kind of make it a little bit thicker on the bottom then the then it needs to be because I need to make the bottom part just a little bit thicker almost like a triangle as you're heading up that's it's a little bit unintuitive to sculpt like this but it does work fairly well okay so I have my base ready I'm looking at my model and I have this stick here this is what I'm going to use for measuring and oftentimes I'll take a measurement of the Midway of my model and I'll actually break the stick in order to reflect that I can actually use this as reference the stick if I was to put that as the Midway and that's the pubic synthesis two of these sticks would be the entire sculpture and that's actually pretty decent size so that means they'll go into kind of like the butt area I'm going to have to hide it a little bit but that's a pretty decent size now I can make it a little bit smaller if I wanted but that's a pretty decent size something that you have to do as a sculptor you have to look at the model and take some time to really look at it look at the position and you know in previous times where the sculpture in a class I felt so rushed because you pay a model and models tend to be expensive but when you have the luxury of having a computer with access to photography and all of this stuff you can really take your time so I know a lot of artists online on YouTube they work extremely fast I tend to be the opposite way these days I used to be very fast but now I've slowed down I don't know why but I think I kind of like to look at things a little bit more carefully and that's the way I I approach things now but generally I think a lot of people in the beginning they approach it much faster than they need to so I'm looking at my model and I'm trying to determine how I'm going to position things I know that his right leg is here he's putting his weight on his left so he's got a little bit of Contra pasta growing and then the left shoulder slumps in because it's a contraposto so your body is kind of counteracting where you put the weight so if you put your weight on your right foot you do that with your your shoulder to compensate it's the opposite so it's a really nice kind of contrast that that you have and it makes a very stiff sort of pose look exciting contrabasso does that when you look at 3D artists the T pose that they do it's like this you have equal weight on two feet it's a very stiff pose but the way they like look at it they just need it for reference because they use bones to rig up their model so it doesn't really matter but if you're a traditional Sculptor you use the culture pasta because that's the most fluid and it's an exciting way of having your model pose very simple you can put any model in a contraposta pose and it looks great so I'm looking at the model and I am going to start it's always very difficult to for me to start because it's a commitment now I'm probably going to do it fairly quick I like to leave these sticks here for support and I think I'm going to put this on the left leg I'm actually going to score a skewering it down to the base what I like about these sticks is that they're very flexible but you don't want to be too flexible here and you can take some Liberty so the hips are going to be right about here I'm going to put the Torso here and bring it all the way up to the head so the head's got to be maybe here so let's get started I can take large shapes of the clay and sculpt them so if I'm sculpting like a a torso I could make kind of like a t-shape and that'll be that it really helps out and it's much easier than taking smaller steps so this top part I'm just going to like slice off because I want it to be a little bit nicer to work with I am going to use this clay it's perfectly fine this has got Grog in it so it's a little easier to fire so as far as the lower body I actually got it that'll be that I'm actually going to cut this in half here and I'm going to take I should have done a little bit more all right I need just a little bit more support for the legs so I'm just going to take a used chunk if you like look at it that's that's a lot of and I'm just going to take care of this make sure that it sticks on here and I'm just going to like push it down I need this to adhere really well to the base that's right this is two legs that I'm using so I'm trying to keep this simple and at the same time I need it to support remember this pipe is going to be going to the right about the buttocks area and I'm going to cut that and now I'm going to take the other slab of clay there we go look at that we're starting to get somewhere and I'm going to cut this like that and that right about here is going to be where the the lower back is going to be so the size could still change it doesn't matter it's uh more important to get some of the general shapes remember standing poses are much harder to do in water-based clay when you don't have a proper proper Armature so here's the pipe and I'm going to simply just going to push this into the back and all that does is support it while I sculpt that's going to give me a little bit of support you know World Dan used to sculpt but he's did a lot of Armature list sort of terracottas and I like those a lot like when you look at the Balzac that's that portrait that he did of the guy like this it's like a triangle going up that's the way you can approach a Armature list sculpture so I'm just going to take this and often I've had like sculptures like this as I'm building them fall so keep that in mind it's just a much more difficult type of sculpture if you are learning how to sculpt you want to do a sitting pose a lying down pose but that poses a few more things because it's a little bit easier to measure when you have something upright like this so remember this is about two heads two sticks tall what about that so I'll need a little bit more I don't know how much more I'm going to add to the top but let's go ahead and do that I can put it here but the problem is when you have weight like this I mean this thing gets pretty heavy you have to be careful about keeping things this tall and this I'm about to kind of start cutting down on this I'm also going to add more clay here you see how you just flexible this is and we're just going to start cutting or might make it just a little bit smaller in the beginning and completely remove the head all right let's add some clay here I'm going to add some clay around the pipe that's going to create a little bit more support make sure you push in the clay pretty well you don't want this to come apart so I'm just going to work on the gesture I'll give you guys some idea what I'm doing because right now it just looks like a huge mess but this is a kind of a classical way of approaching sculpture another really great tool to have for this sort of style is the foil the Coke can this is such a real this is such a great tool using this the sculpt is amazing and you do this just get rid of that lumpiness right it off the beginning I don't know if you guys could tell but that's completely gone you know the first day of a sculpture like this is really just the support and structure I just work on very basic stuff it might take a while but just kind of concentrate on having something that's not going to fall apart here Midway hips are going this way so that's the direction of the hips and the shoulders are going to be right about there so I'm looking right there is the left leg the right leg kind of comes out to the front so if you're looking at it this way we actually have to have a little bit more to that leg and then this is important this line you want to exaggerate this imagine seeing the spine to the front or the back this S curve is really like what artists try and do they continue this line like to the foot so if you were to look at your body as you Contra pasta here's the spine going down kind of exaggerate that makes it a stronger sculpture in my view and then the head kind of faces this way we haven't figured out exactly where that's going to be so you're going to get the chest right there echoing the shoulder girdle then you have your arm right about here your other arm right about there there's going to be a negative shape here in between the the legs but I wouldn't worry about that just yet but right now we're going to add the shape to the front leg because remember it comes out this looks flat so it's not like that's what we want we don't want to have this weird flatness weight bearing leg I mean this doesn't look like very much at all yet so it really helps to have your model change often usually in art classes every 10 minutes they move the model so right about here I'm going to slice a little over the back even though I'm going to be slicing too much and okay foreign where the base is because this is going to be a very weak point you want this to be strong enough and also when you remove it you don't want it to leave such a large cavity that's going to collapse thank you and what happens as you're sculpting even day by day this kind of sinks down a little bit that's the bad thing about no Armature but you kind of get used to it and you just kind of learn to kind of prop up your your sculpture like this just kind of push it up [Music] these little sticks I like to use them because I can skewer where I think the bones are so for this right leg I'm just going to take this and I'm kind of like looking at my reference and comparing the angle I'm going to start here I'm just kind of putting it this way and it helps you to kind of figure out where where it's going to be plus I'm getting like these mosquitoes inside here but let me now I put it on there and if I look the more reference unless you're not too happy with the way he has the leg so from the front part I can tell that he actually has it more this way so I'm going to start it here and you can you can exaggerate this a bit so I'm going to take this again I'm going to add where I want this to go right about there he's going to help me guide what the middle is going to be so you know these things are extremely handy you could also use calipers but I find that this is pretty darn good so this one comes there to the middle that's where the pubic synthesis is and I can take measurements from here and then just using this I can kind of line it up like this and I can tell where I need to go to fill the rest so the head is going to be right about there so that means that the shoulders are right here and the shoulders of this sculpture because it's contrabasso remember weight is on this left leg that means that the hip is going to be going excuse me going up so the hips are actually doing this if I can kind of put it here and then what the shoulders are doing is this see if we can put this on here so you guys can tell let me put some more clay so that's what Contra pasta is it's simpler and the more you exaggerate these things the more Dynamic it is but you know you don't want to go too overboard but that's about what it is and for this pose he actually has it just a little bit more like this so in reality that shoulder is right there of course this should be curvy because of the spine but I'm just adding this as the mid wire so right now I am going to start putting in where I think that arm is going to be so this is a rough idea of a sculpture is not finished but of course I want to be able to add all the elements it was just a little bit often time when I do the head I don't put the entire thing the neck is angled up like this so if I look at it this way and it's still kind of flexible so we can kind of figure out what we want now I'm going to take the two sticks again because I keep going back to my measurements and it actually goes down a little bit this kind of helps you figure out where the top of the head is and now I'm going to take the clay and I'm going to wrap it just make sure you get I'm going to push it up just a bit because this clay or this stick I'm going to remove and also keep in mind now if this is the front of the sculpture where you want your model to look and I think for this sort of stuff when you have the Contra pasta like this it's nice to have the model look this way it's another Dynamic way of sculpting is to have the model Look Away you could like make the heads go this way but I do like it's a much more natural way to look to the right than to the left so I'll just kind of sculpt a little bit of the head that way once this dries a bit at least I'll know the direction of how I want the sculpture to go and to look a lot of people they create like a profile for the head I tend not to do that I prefer to sculpt the roundness right off the bat and I'm just going to lay all of this in I usually like to have the aid of a tool and this could still move if I wanted to make the neck a little bit thinner and the trapezius because I'm going to have to drop the shoulder because right now there it's a little bit angled but I want to bring this down but what you could also do is bring the right shoulder up and I am trying to keep in mind that this could fall off the Armature remember it's just that pipe pulling everything up you definitely don't want to move your sculpture around when you're doing this as far as like moving the stand you want to be very balanced so let me and this arm is actually going towards the back but it's um the way he has his body he is actually twisting the Torso but I'm not exactly sure how much I will be twisting now I'll probably do that a little bit more in the next session and remember use your big tools for the initial stages because people get caught up two they get too caught up in details if you use big tools like this paint scrapers flat wooden tools it keeps you from doing useless detail that you're going to be erasing later on because you made a mistake and in my my way of sculpting I make so many mistakes that you're better off doing that so I'm just going to smooth the back out a little bit [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right guys I think I'm pretty much done for today with this so this is pretty much what I'm leaving it at and the reason I'm leaving it at this point is that it's too soft to really work on it too much this is getting too thick but I'm okay leaving this amount of clay tapering off to the top because I need some sort of structure to support this tomorrow I'll continue this and I will start adding a little bit more of the gesture but for right now I always try to like work on the structure of the clay the next step is the gesture and the pose and then I'll start doing the details as per usual thank you for watching hope you guys learned something and I'll see you in the next video just when I think you couldn't possibly be any Dumber you go and do something like this and totally dear self

Channel: Sculpt Some

Views: 9,298

Keywords: figure sculpture, traditional sculpture, how to sculpt, human sculpture, basic sculpting lesson, sculpting tutorial, learn to sculpt, art training, learning art, artistic anatomy, sculpting, sculpt people, drawing lesson, art class, art school, art lesson, video tutorial, artist, art blog, art vlog, human anatomy, tutorial, clay modeling, art, anatomy

Id: dlHHhnI09X8

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022