FAQ

Jun 25, 20148 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Jun 25, 2014

2K Views

So I thought I would finally put up an FAQ since I get asked how I make my sculptures pretty often. If there's anything else that you would like to know just put a comment here and I'll update this journal with the answer.

Q: What materials do you use on your figures?

A: I make them by first making an armature out of aluminum wire(sort of like a wire skeleton) and put Aves Apoxie sculpt around it and let it dry. Then I do most of the sculpting with Super Sculpey Medium Blend. I will also add some Aves Apoxie sculpt to areas of a figure that I feel are too weak so that it will be strengthened and I use it for certain other areas where strength is needed also.

Q: How do you get the figures so smooth?

A: Well I try to sculpt them as smooth as I can but honestly most of the smoothness comes from lots and lots of sanding using sandpaper sponges. You can buy these at most hardware and home improvement stores.

Q: How do you paint the figures?

A: After they're all sanded, cleaned and dried, I put primer on them. Depending on how much small details they have I will either use Tamiya Fine Surface Primer (L) or just regular Krylon Color Master Primer that you can buy from Walmart. I get both as just white.
After that I do any touch up sanding that I need and if I don't need to put any more primer on after that sanding, I airbrush a layer of white undercoating on it because any pale colors will show the difference between the primer and the clay that shows through the sanded areas if I don't (dark colors like black don't really need an undercoating though). Also, by airbrushing the figure white it makes it so I don't have to do white painting by hand later if I can paint the surrounding colors right the first time. So it can save me a step.
Next I do any other airbrushing that I've planned to do. Sometimes I have areas masked off and sometimes I just need to paint a whole piece a solid color so I don't need to worry about it. Then I do all the hand painting.
After all the hand painting is done and dry I spray it with Krylon Acrylic Crystal Clear Flat (sealant). If I feel that even that has left it too shiny, I spray some Mr. Super Clear Matt sealant over that and that always makes it completely not shiny. The last step is adding any gloss that I need. I always add gloss to the eyes but will also add it to the inside of the mouth or any 'gems' that I painted on. I just use Sculpey Gloss Glaze which is sold next to the Sculpey stuff in the art stores.

Q: What kind of paint do you use?

A: I use mostly Testor's Model Master Acryl paint and Createx paint for airbrushing and Jacquard Neopaque and Jacquard Lumiere for hand painting.

Q: What do you use to glue pieces together?

A: I mostly used the Aves Fixit Paste since it is ridiculously strong, but since it is white/grayish and will yellow a lot with time, if I need to stick something on like a jewel where I don't want the paste to show up much if it oozes around the edges a little bit, I will use Magic Smooth which is not as strong but dries translucent/whitish. Since both of those pastes take about 4 hours to dry, if I need something to dry in place really quick I just use super glue.

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