The Blackest Black

this is black 4.0 the self-proclaimed blackest paint in the universe according to its creator and this is white 2.0 the self-proclaimed whitest paint in the world not the universe again according to its creator now are these actually the blackest and the whitest Paints in the whatever I don't know and I don't really care the point is they are hella black and pretty white the black especially is very very very black compared to a conventional black paint as you can see on this Swatch test anyway when I learned about these paints I had an idea of combining them into a single sculpture so for this project I'm going to make a Shadow Monster reminiscent of no face from the film Spirited Away but of course I'm not making no face I'm doing my own thing basically I'm designing a monster that's hopefully going to be completely silhouetted in Shadow with the help of this super duper black paint and have a bright white mask for a face you know kind of like no face except less Blobby but perhaps just as hungry so here is our Armature this is the biggest I've ever built standing at over 19 in tall but the reason I made it so big is because I wanted this creature to be crawling up out of the ground and if he didn't start out this big he's going to end up tiny in the finished piece that said I am imagining this creature as terrifyingly huge so the size is to scale compared to my other pieces in real life he would be about 10t or about 3 m tall when I first thought up this creature I was imagining an elongated kind of disproportionate but still muscular creature but after posing the Armature I actually felt like a more gangly skeletal creature would be more interesting and I think that a skinnier creature is going to help me out a lot since if black for .0 works like they advertise there will be essentially no detail left on this creature except for the face and if this guy is very muscular then the silhouette is going to be a bit harder to read he's going to be more of a mass of black than these spidery black limbs reaching out in Practical terms this means I'm not actually going to spend a whole lot of time trying to get the surface detail to be perfect or add little wrinkles or skin folds or whatever because hopefully they're all going to disappear a lot of sculptors emphasize the silhouette as the thing you should pay attention to when sculpting and so do I so this piece in addition to being an excessively elaborate paint test will also be a test of whether I can make a sculpture work using very nearly just the silhouette and almost no other details to help will it work well you should stick around to the end of the video and judge for yourself so here here's what the piece looks like after the initial shaping from here I take it outside to sand and smooth out any big uneven areas then I can build on it with a lot more control now that I have a stronger Foundation to work with I know I said I wasn't going to do any details but that doesn't mean I'm just going to leave things Blobby and undefined if the paint doesn't completely black out the creature the way I'm hoping I want the shapes that are visible to look good plus between you and me I like sculpting I like spending the time at the bench and shaping things making it look good even if it's not all visible and increases the time spent on each video for no appreciable benefit aside from my own satisfaction it kind of makes me a terrible YouTuber to focus on hidden details instead of getting the video out in a reasonable time but hey I'm the one that has to live with this thing so I'd rather spend extra time with it and be happy than rush and regret it later I don't usually do armatures in the hands but in this case I want the fingers to be very long and spindly and they're going to need the support so I'm going to start with a twisted pair of floral wire to build out the bones wrap them together in a bundle then epoxy them onto the wrist other than that it's nothing too complicated pose the wires into kind of a scary fingers position covered in clay and that's about that hands is something I actually quite like doing certainly it can be challenging but I generally find it more fun than frustrating and sort of like how I decided the body should be skeletal kind of on accident once I squished some clay onto these armatures I found that I kind of like the messy distorted nature of them it sort of feels nice and otherworldly and I think they're going to look really cool when they're blacked out so I decided to leave the fingers kind of messed up and won't do much more to it than this after looking at these for a bit I decided that the fingers were just a little too vertical so I decided to put the hand at an angle instead I think the angled hands adds a lot to the composition and adds a lot of dynamism to the action sometimes it's a little things that really help make a pose work while I'm fixing the hand there's also been other cracks that's developed during baking I think due to poor weight distribution on the monster he's leaning far forward and the Torso is kind of poorly supported in this position these aren't project ending disasters or anything but they do need patching up with some epoxy clay epoxy Clay is much stronger than polymer clay so it's a good option for reinforcing weak areas like this while I'm here I'm also going to add a Bend to the neck there wasn't a repair needed or anything I just wanted to add a bit of a tilt to the head as I said before it's the little things that help make a pose work you've seen hints of the first attempt at the face already because as usual I'm editing out of order but as I said I wanted a white mask for a face and this first attempt was okay it's not terrible but it's also not quite there I tried giving him some teeth and it is better but it still doesn't quite convey the deaded horror that I was imagining so I gave it a second go this time I went fullon creepy pasta fanged horror monster looking for a meal secretly I'm also hedging my bets against the sculpture not having enough points of interest in case the piece just isn't interesting with a planer face I want your eyes to have some kind of point of Interest it can glom on to the teeth are made of translucent CA clay for some increased durability Cosa Clay is flexible so small parts like these are much more resistant to breaking I went with translucent clay because I wanted to leave myself the option of doing translucent teeth effect later on and I decided not to give him a tongue because I don't think he needs it and it's weirder without I like this one a lot this might be my favorite out of the three did I say three I did because I also made a bonus third attempt that's a bit more humanlike and a bit more baby like just because I thought this would be the maximum creep out version and man and it is really disturbing at least for me this is the scariest one out of all of them so which one is the real one all of them whether you run into the mask the monster or the child depends on your luck maybe you think the child is what you want but maybe you'd rather not become his play thing and it would be less painful if the monster just eats you and gets it over with maybe you want the mask but who knows what it wants with anything I don't think there's a good choice here okay we're almost done sculpting but as I was working on this piece a thought occurred to me that I quite like being able to see this much of the monster if you recall the original armit mockup I had the ground coming up all the way up to here and I don't want that anymore so instead of an elaborate hole I decided to turn this temporary pedestal into a little stair step as if he's crawling up onto a raised platform maybe he prows the subway and that's the start of a stair Landing or maybe he's contained in a nefarious research laboratory and his pen has some stairs coming down after the initial entrance I know I'm reaching but that's what you get for changing a major component of the project 90% of the way through and are trying to justify the decision bonus though it does let me reposition his fingers around the steps and I think this actually makes the weightbearing hand creepier while we're here I'm fixing these brakes with epoxy clay just like the cracks on the body epoxy really is a fantastic supplemental material to polymer clay and that's the sculpture I couldn't resist the skin folds underneath the jaw but mostly kept my own promise of not too much details I think I will call him the long Shadow set too corny maybe but I like it it's a neutral enough name that can incorporate the multiple faces and obviously describes his appearance or it will as soon as we paint him speaking of which here's the little stinker after he's been primed no real drama there but with that we can get on with the painting I'm actually going to start with the base on this one and I'll begin by first sealing the whole thing in Mod Podge bare MDF on the cut edges are very absorbent and I just want to make sure that the whole base has a consistent surface for the terrain paste I'll be applying I don't actually know if this is necessary but I just wanted a little extra security blanket going into it I then carve a few cracks into the wood using a hobby knife and a Dremel and sealed it again in Mod Podge I did this in the wrong order I should have carved the cracks first then I apply some terrain effects pastes a desert sand and rough graay pumis in this case to simulate some concrete texture I don't think I made the best use out of this stuff to be honest I wasn't feeling confident that I could achieve a smooth concrete surface so I ended up leaning into the rough finish instead but in retrospect I think I'd rather try to go for smooth concrete instead even if I failed a bit at it uh the pastes are great by the way very easy to apply and dry very strong would try again the reason I'm working on the Bas first this time is because in my test testing black 4.0 is really fragile and I wanted the option to finish the model directly on this base if I had to in order to minimize the amount of handling of the model I'll have to do anyway after the paste sets up I whack it a few times with the various tools I had to add some harder wear on the surface this didn't do too much of anything to be completely candid but at least it was fun um as for the paint I first tried to paint Direct onto the terrain paste but found that it wasn't sticking very well so I changed tactics and primed the whole base black and applied some polyurethane varnish to protect it from rough handling and that worked out great I had no more coverage issues after that basically I slop on various Shades of Gray to simulate modeled concrete this process is a huge mess but it is very easy and gets the job done occasionally I'll splatter on some paint via brush just to create some spotting and other variations like I said this process is a huge mess but it looks great I think anyway I apply a whole lot of layers of this stuff working my way from dark gray all the way up to light light gray and then applied some washes of various colors to make this look nice and gross at some point there was so much gross stains on the floor that I think this might work better as a monster in Chernobyl or some place that's completely apocalyptic like that but you know I don't mind personally I'm working on becoming less of a perfectionist so if the base isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be that's okay I still like it and it's interesting in its own way and once the base is done I can finally paint the actual monster I'm just cutting the black 4.0 paint with some water and nothing else of course no shading or highlighting is needed so I just get in there and lay down a nice even code of this stuff last video I mentioned that I had opened a patreon page where I'm posting extra content sculpting tutorials and other such things and a bunch of you guys signed up I'm so grateful for your support and I want to take this time now to thank everyone who decided to pitch in so a hearty welcome and thank you to JC torta Oxanna fruit duck roll Thomas Hill Jared pile Matthew the Heart Austin weeks Lanny moo Lou art Lincoln Robin du new Olivier aquid BB dardar bvious foe BMP Leandra Red Bull Give Wing Xavier Rodriguez Uncle Sasquatch Caleb hernandz joeri Garretts derus Matt Hoffman big man Simon O'Brien Cooper Alton a Kaden Loff barad Beary Brent sis magl Lord Miss PT blurst the cyclop Jana Gibbons Marcos Carlos Kevin and a very very special thank you to Jay Garis for being a Patrone ofth Arts tier supporter so about this paint I'm going to be real with you guys it's not that black I mean it is very black the blackest paint in my kit by far but the marketing material would have you believe that whatever you paint this onto it's going to turn into a dimensionless void in Your Vision but it's really not like that it is very black especially on camera but in real life I can definitely still see the shapes underneath maybe I'm doing something wrong but I don't think I am I mean I'm just spraying the paint in nice even coats and not even cutting it with some other chemical that could affect it um I do have some theories for why it isn't that black for me but it is a long and esoteric discussion so I'll leave that for the extended commentary video I put on patreon speaking of which if you are interested in hearing more about this piece or if you want to learn character sculpting in polymer clay I've got you covered I recently posted some videos on how to pose and compose your sculpture the common tools I use and how to refine and develop shapes in your sculpture so if all that sounds interesting to you or you just want to support my work in general and get your name mentioned in a video please do check out patreon.com arong art link of course is in the description now that the body is done it's finally time to work on the faces just like the body I'm spraying on white 2.0 cut with nothing but water the white paint is pretty drama free it took a few coats to cover fully and Achieve maximum whiteness but that's pretty normal with an airbrush at least in my experience once all three faces have been painted white I get into some pastel shading I'm doing this before painting the eyes and the mouth at least on the mask and on the child faces because you can't varnish black 4.0 it fuzzes up like crazy if you try to matte varnish it due to the way its matted nature works by the way between every step here pretty much I'm varnishing the faces to lock each step in it requires a little bit of a mental commitment but at least it saves your work to some extent after The Pastels I paint the eyes and mouth with black 4.0 this use case here worked very well when it's sitting in a recessed area like this black 4.0 looks like the inky deep dimensionless void that their marketing material claims it should do it's what I was hoping to happen on the body but I guess that was too much to ask for now for the monster face I'm starting with a reddish pinkish wash in a mouth and eyes I had in intentionally left the inside of the mouth looking messy and I think it's really working out it looks malformed and weirdly developed which is kind of perfect for what I'm going for I extended the shading to the outside of the mouth as well because I accidentally got some paint on there and thought it looked great happy accident is what I'd call that anyway once all that's shaded in the eyes and the teeth get a yellow treatment followed by a dark brown wash I decided against the translucent teeth effect because to be frank I really didn't feel like keeping track of which socket which tooth came from so I just did it this way to cap it all off I gloss varnish the mouth and the eyes just for that little bit of extra ew and that is all the faces done okay it's assembly time first I transfer the monster onto the concrete base thankfully there were no damages to the paint dur during the transfer but you can see I'm being very careful here literally white gloving this process and only touching it from the bottom where it would be hard to notice flaws next I paint on little Shadow wakes where he's coming up out of the ground and let me be real with you I don't like how this looks I wanted the lines to be much cleaner than this but the surface was way too rough to paint any clean lines with so I decided to change tactics and go for something a lot fuzzier and rougher looking in retrospect I would approach the same task very differently knowing what I know now but at the time I was committed when the paint went down so fuzzy Shadows is what we ended up with but with that we are done and it is time for the final reveal which looks a little something like this [Music] and that is it what do you think guys did the black and white thing work for you do you have a favorite face for me it's definitely the fanged monster face it's going to be the one that I leave on for display no question I quite enjoyed this project despite the paint not being as black as I'd hoped it looks good on camera at least and I suppose it makes sense when you think about it anyway thank you so much for watching I appreciate you I appreciate your time and thank you once again to all my wonderful patrons and yeah that's it for this one I will see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Art Chong Art

Views: 938,634

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Id: Axau2W_-WDg

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024