Polymer Clay TUTORIAL: Sculpting TIPS For Beginners

This video is going to be all about polymer clay. I'll talk about different brands, tools, techniques, and everything else you need to get started with sculpting. Polymer clay is based on polyvinyl chloride, often referred to as PVC plastic. So it's a synthetic clay which doesn't dry out, but it will cure and harden when baked in the oven. There are many different brands of polymer clay. And generally, yes, there is a relationship between price and quality. Fimo, Sculpey, and Cosclay are all great brands. But even within brands, you also have to navigate between colors and hardnesses. Generally, the firmer the clay, the higher level of details you can achieve. Though as a beginner, the firmer clays can be tricky to work with because you have to condition it more to make it workable. So Cosclay or Super Sculpey is a great place to start if you're just getting into sculpting. For this video, I'll be using a combination of Sculpey Medium and Cosclay Soft mixed together. And we'll get into the specifics of those later on. Straight out of the pack, the clay will pretty much crumble in your hands. So conditioning the clay essentially means kneading and softening it until it becomes workable. I start by breaking the clay into smaller, more manageable pieces, and then knead a portion at a time about the size of a walnut. Then I roll my walnut portion into a clay sausage, breaking it into half and re-rolling it several times. Once I have a series of sausages, I start combining them into a larger portion and kneading it once again until it's a uniform lump. Then, depending on what I'm sculpting, I often roll it into a sheet of clay. This can be done with a pasta roller or a rolling pin. When rolling out the clay, you might spot little air bubbles like this under the surface. I just pop these with a tool and continue rolling until I have the thickness that I want. If you find the clay is getting a bit too sticky, you can actually use cornstarch. You can use this tip throughout by rubbing a bit on the surface of your sculpture, on your hands, or I like to put a bit on my work surface when rolling out the clay. With my clay prepped, I'm going to make a simple armature shape out of tinfoil, which gives me a base to sculpt on top of. If you want to see a more detailed process of how I build my armatures out of tinfoil and aluminium wire, I'll link to a couple of videos in the description below. An armature basically acts as a support structure and if I didn't use it, my sculpture would just look like this. Tinfoil is also great for bulking out shapes, meaning you'll save on the amount of clay you use and that's also a good thing when it comes time to bake your sculpture. Here, I'm also adding some aluminium mesh to support the shape of any thin, sticky, outtie bits. There's so many different things you can use as tools. The most basic tools I'd recommend for starting are these, a rounded metal tool or the end of a teaspoon, a loop tool, a silicon rubber tip tool, a brush and a sponge, and a pasta maker or rolling pin as we've just used to condition the clay. A few weeks back, I did a tutorial on how to make your own custom tools from things such as brass tubes, sewing needles, popsicle sticks and a guitar string. So if you're interested in that, you can find a link to that video in the description below. You can make a base for your sculpture from something as simple as a coffee coaster. I use a screw to hold the sculpture in place and this helps a great deal when it comes time to add details. When I want to add a raw piece of clay to my sculpt, I use my metal tool to merge the two together. To smooth the clay, I start by running a loop tool over my surfaces. The goal here isn't to remove any clay, but rather move the clay around to get rid of any underlying lumps and bumps. Then I use a bit of isopropyl alcohol and run scotch brite gently over top, followed by a soft makeup sponge. Isopropyl alcohol can be used instead of traditional clay softener. Just make sure you wear the proper protection. This is pretty smooth, but the isopropyl can make the clay quite sticky, so now is a good time to reintroduce a bit of cornstarch to get rid of the tackiness. And here I use my silicon tip tool to enhance any sharp lines and reach any tight spots. Then it's time to add textures. Like tools, so many different objects can be used to create interesting textures. Here I'm using ball bearings in a small Ziploc bag, and when I tap it on the surface of my sculpture, it creates a random and organic dotted pattern. But to reach any tight spots, I use a single dotting tool, or maybe the end of a paintbrush, and I stamp the clay through a thin sheet of plastic, which gives the texture a softer look. The plastic trick is also great for line work and creates soft, clean lines without actually removing any clay. Texturing is a constant process of back and forth and layering up your textures in order to create something that's organic and realistic. Now it's time to pre-bake what I've made so far, and while part one is in the oven, I'm going to prepare the next pieces of the sculpture, which will be made from Cosclay alone so that they stay flexible. Cosclay is the only clay I know of that stays flexible after baking. Other brands will just snap if you do this. I personally find Cosclay, even the medium to hard one, to be a bit on the softer side when it comes time to detail work. That's why I mix it with Sculpey medium at the beginning of this video. But for this next part, I'm using Cosclay on its own, and at the end, you'll be able to compare and see the qualities of the different types of clay once fully baked. Because of the flexibility and the relative simple shapes I'm making here, I don't need to add an armature. I'm simply placing my pieces in the oven in the shape I want before pre-baking them. I'm also going to have some fun with embedding little gems into the clay. As the clay cures at a very low temperature in the oven, I'm not worried about baking them alongside the clay. Bake & Bond works as a glue, and it's great when it comes time to combine our different pieces. This helps ensure that the new clay probably joins with the pre-baked clay. Bake & Bond also enables you to join two raw pieces of clay together without blending them. This is especially handy when you want to maintain the definition of the different pieces or if you work with different colors. Then it's time for our final bake. When baking your sculpture, it needs about 15 minutes per every six millimeters of clay at 120 degrees Celsius. And once the clay is baked, it will still feel soft until it's had a chance to fully cool down. Here on the final sculpture, you can see the difference in flexibility where we have the 50-50 mix of Sculpey and Cosclay, and here on the sticky Aldi bits that are made of Cosclay alone. I like to paint my polymer clay with acrylic paint, but you can also use pigment powders, alcohol inks, or spray paint. You don't need to prime polymer clay as it's not porous, so you can just get right into painting. I'm going to start by blocking out my base colors. Then I'm going to add a series of washes. A wash is just a watered-down acrylic paint that I brush on and I let it get into all the little cavities before wiping off the excess. You want to work relatively quickly to avoid the paint drying before you've had a chance to wipe it off your high points. A wash would typically be a darker color than the rest of your sculpture, that way adding more contrast and bringing out the details in your surface. Then I'm going to do some dry brushing, which is all about bringing out the high points of your sculpture. I do this by rubbing the excess paint off my brush before lightly running it over the surface of my sculpture. By using washes and dry brushing in combination, you're really going to bring out the details in your sculpture work. And one of my favorite paint techniques are flicking. I just use a color wash and then I flick it off a cut-down chip brush. This won't suit all projects, but I really like how it adds some randomness to the paint job. Lastly, you don't need to seal your polymer clay sculpture, but sometimes it can be helpful if you know your sculpture will get touched a lot. You can also add a glossy varnish to bring out certain details or to make an area look wet. Let me know if you found these tips helpful and feel free to ask more questions in the comments. I don't even know what I made today, but I'm going to call it alien spring onion.