Sculpey
polycounter lvl 18
After watching Jesse Moody's work with Sculpey detailed in pimping and previews recently, I thought I might try it out for myself. I've read a little bit about the different varieties of clay and techniques for working with it, but I'd be interested to hear from people who have worked with the stuff.
Looking at the Sculpey website, it looks like "Primo Sculpey" might be the current best option, although I've often heard "Super Sculpey" mentioned around here.
I'm also particularly interested to hear people's techniques. I've worked extensively with raku clay and made some pretty sizable pieces, so I know the basics of building things out of clay. Any hints on armatures or anything else that it'd be useful to know specific to working with polymer clay would be appreciated.
Looking at the Sculpey website, it looks like "Primo Sculpey" might be the current best option, although I've often heard "Super Sculpey" mentioned around here.
I'm also particularly interested to hear people's techniques. I've worked extensively with raku clay and made some pretty sizable pieces, so I know the basics of building things out of clay. Any hints on armatures or anything else that it'd be useful to know specific to working with polymer clay would be appreciated.
Replies
Never tried Primo Sculpey so I can't compare. But even for a beginner, a block of Super Sculpey isn't that expensive and definitely great to work with.
Rube you are right about mixing the fimo. They have all kinds of colors to help "tint" your clay to the color you want to make easier on your eyes and how light hits it.
I am using a gray right now just to check it out since I figured it would be an easy color to work with.
Straight out of the box super sculpey is pretty translucent and can be hard to concentrate detail on.
Also Super sculpey is great because it doesn't really harden unless you bake it and you can bake it in your home oven.
A 1 lb box usually ranges from $ 7 - $ 11 US dollars. It's really not bad at all. I haven't used a full box yet in my bust.
When I mix up some more clay tonight I'm gonna take some shots on how much to mix to tint the clay and how to mix it and post them in my thread.
I have the gnomon dvds on sculpture, mold casting, armature making and they are awesome.
Also I would invest in some sculpey softener. Just put a dab of it on the end of a synthetic brush, and you can clean off any fingerprints. It also works great with blending things together. Like if you want to make some great looking wrinkles, just makes some small strips of sculpey and place them in the pattern of wrinkles, then use the brush with sculpey softner and blend them together.