Another Alien? Buckle up, it’s gonna be aliens, horror, fantasy, and monster stuff until I die, lol. This piece of in-progress is definitely more indicative of the results I’m craving. More detail, and more detail.
I used Sculpey® extra-firm synthetic clay, and I swear by it now. It holds every crease and fingerprint (ha!) beautifully and it’s pretty easy to work with. Of course, there’s the cost- at $15-$20CAD for a pack, it doesn’t seem too expensive, but if I want to build anything ‘life-sized’, I’m going to need to take out a loan, lol.
Alien
H.R. Giger’s ‘Xenomorph’ is probably one of my favourite subjects to sculpt….or draw, watch, talk about (you get the idea). I started this sculpture ‘completely wrong’ (with an image in my head, instead of on paper, lol – a process that works very well for me when it comes to subjects I am intimately familiar with.
Unfortunately, while everything about this sculpture was going fantastic, the natural clay medium I selected was anything to the contrary. So, after a great deal of babysitting through the drying process- eventually the sculpture cracked in ways only images can describe (see below).
Just the same, I was determined to get something out of the experience so I sealed the sculpture up best I could, and airbrushed the base shading- before having to move, first once- then twice- before the sculpture was discovered by the cat. Needless to say, it is no longer on the to-do list, and now rests in a position of prestige in our gaming room.
Gothic Horror Dice Tower
Alright, so full disclaimer, when I mentioned above that the Alien sculpture was my first real sculpture with wireframe, that’s not entirely correct.
This dice tower (for tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons®) was actually the first clay sculpture constructed using Sculpey® and using a wire mesh (that counts, right?). I looked online for a dice tower I could be proud to own and although there are several really nice options out there, I felt compelled to create my own. How hard could it be, right? Seriously, it was one heck of a learning process.
Once again working from insider my head (instead of a proper rough sketch to ease my future frustration) I dove right in with a batch of sculpting tools, a roll of chicken-wire, and a dream (lol). Of course I’m a big fan of the H.P. Lovecraft ‘Cthulhu’ mythos, horror in general, and wanted to incorporate a batch of my interests in one fell swoop. This dice tower is the result.
