my first serious clay maquette

A couple of years ago when I was trying to make a conceptart.org profile, I started getting inspired by all the extraordinary clay model work I saw on the site.  Professionals and amateurs alike posting all of these models on the form really blow me away with the detail of their creations.  The amount of money, time and planning it takes just to make and construct one was really interesting.  Drawing inspiration from the site I started practicing and investing money into tools.

Super sculpey firm - better than regular super sculpey 

Pasta machine - for blending colors and sculpey together

Detailing tools - wooden sculpting tools work really well when starting out

Armature wire - is wire that you braid that becomes the skeleton of your model

Aluminum foil - used to wrap around the wire after you form the skeleton of your model

Plumbers glue - great for sealing the wire together, and fixing cracks

Youtube - to see how its done



What I found in making this one was that the most important part of any model is the structure underneath the clay.  Making sure everything is as tight as possible, can stand and support weight.  Too much aluminum foil and you limit the amount of clay that can go in specific areas.  If the wire is not strong enough the whole thing can start to fall apart.  The one thing I learned from this one was to not overdo it.  Having tried to paint it and failing I primed it and sprayed it again with a solid color.  Doing this several times started to take away from the overall detail I had put into it.  That and I found that there is a cracking problem I need to address somehow after baking it.  Once I have money to buy more clay, I will do a more up to date Marquette with a step by step guide documenting my process.

Here’s some pictures of the process I went through with my first one.

                                                

Trying to drill a hole in one of the hands lead to me accidently breaking the hand in half.  That’s were the plumbers glue comes in handy.

At this point I already painted it about two times and did not like the results.  So I went with a golden brown finish and left it at that.  All in all what I took away from this one was to have a solid plan of what I want to do from the start.