ADVANCED DRAPERY & FOLDS in SCULPTURE pt 3 tutorial fabric layers draping classical figure sculpture

Hey there art fans, John Burns here. This is my third video for the drapery on Mercedes. We've done the primary, the secondary, and now we're doing the tertiary forms. We're going to work with the raking tools, the brushes, the solvents that I use, and the application of the clear coat, and along the way some of the things to look out for, some of the pitfalls, and just some techniques to help you get the most out your sculpting experience. So if you find this video useful, please like, please subscribe, please share it with a friend. This all helps me continue to bring videos to you, and I thank you for your patronage and your time. So let's get going. Thanks. Alright, so at this point I'm pretty much done sculpting the drapery. Yep. So the last two videos I showed how to start it, and you know, not just start it, but how to look at it. We're looking at it through two light sources. You can see the shadow, and you add clay from a profile view, and then you turn it a little more and add from a profile view, and then you can go back in and fill. Well, after you do that, you can use a tool such as this to go in there and kind of smear the added clay. So when you add it, you end up having pieces that are, you know, kind of put together, and you have these gaps, so you can close it over and fill it out. Well, then you need another tool, which is going to pretty much take this down level. So this is a rake tool that I've made. I have a video, I'll include it at the end, on how to make your own tools if you can't find your rake tools. Here's another one. This one has teeth cut into it with a dremel. This one has wire wrapped around a bigger wire, which makes kind of a finer rake. So anyway, as we move on down through the progression, I have a really tight, tightly wrapped wire. I mean, it's just right up against the next, you know, it's almost like a coil, like a tightly wound spring. And that pretty much gets me where I want to go. If your clay is moving around too much, your studio is warm, that's, you know, going to give you those results. Wait till either later in the night or early in the morning, which is best, because then it's all night to cool. And then you can get the results you want. Well, once you pretty much have it raked, you're going to get a solvent. You can use spit if you want to use spit. I've used spit. You know, it's probably not that healthy to keep, you know, putting your brush in your moth and working your clay. But, you know, to each his own. You can use lighter fluid for like a grill. So this is just a generic lighter fluid, nothing special. I just put it in a regular old cup. This is, you know, the equivalent of a Dixie cup. And you don't need much. A little bit goes a long way. So this is a hog's hair brush. And this is very coarse. So you see the marks quite a bit as you drag it over. I mean, it still looks better than rake marks, that's for sure. But as you continue to work over the clay, you will make those rake marks softer. And sometimes just put it on lightly, yet liberally. You'll see it run and kind of bleed into the clay. That's good. And don't start digging in expecting to get favorable results. Once that clay softens up a little bit, you're able to take down those rake marks pretty favorably. And you will start to create like a slurry in your brush. And that's kind of like the equivalent of slip in ceramic terms. And when that happens, I just wipe it on the edge of the cup here. See, you'll start to get this stuff on here and you just wipe it off. You can use that to your advantage to fill gaps. Don't expect it to be too solid. But one thing that happens that's really favorable, you might not think it's favorable in the moment, but you start to really see how well you've raked down the surface. And the surface ends up showing nuances that aren't really smooth. So I've gone back and touched up this line. I've looked at it from a different point of view and seen some areas that were really distracting to me, that I didn't want to see cast in the final casting, you know, which will get trapped in the mold, the mold details. Just got my rake tool back out and, you know, work the rake over the surface just very lightly, almost like a feather, featherweight. So here I've got the rake marks and maybe you like that. Maybe you want to take those details to the foundry or in your mold or however you're going to do it. The foundry has to replicate all that if they decide to cut up your sculpture. Sometimes they have to cut up your sculpture once it's in a wax in order to allow the ceramic shell to flow through it. And if they have to cut a window somewhere, they cut it down like that, they have to retexture all that. So if it's smooth, you have a better chance, you know, getting a better rate from the foundry for one. And secondly, you know, you don't have to worry about seeing their hand in it because it's a lot easier to replicate smooth. So once you get to this point and you have things smoothed out, what you do is you move to, say like in some of these really detailed folds, you don't exactly want to be ramming your coarse brush in there. This one is a sable brush. So these are meant for oil paints. Yeah. And you'll start to see a lot of these brush marks, which seem coarse and harsh, start to smooth out. And you'll see even more of the nuances show up in the form. You know, it depends how far you want to go with it. This is really what we're calling the tertiary forms. And by the way, this clay gets very sticky. When you cut it with the lighter fluid, it's going to be very tacky, sticky, gummy, and just roll with it. So as you let this stuff evaporate, it will eventually evaporate. Your clay will become a little more rigid, resistant to the touch again, less tacky. And at that point anyway, we're going to go ahead and put a layer of crystal clear on it. So we don't really need to worry about that anyway. So then on the broad surfaces, I have a wider, it's the same thing, same type of brush. It's just a wider brush. And this allows for the broad strokes. And this will start to give it more of a polished look. So I can take a look at how I want that to look. I can look at that judge for myself, where the light blurs between the transition from the clay to the plaster model, if that's acceptable or not, because the mold is going to catch up, catch a lot of this. And the truth is, is like sometimes things we had a saying that the bronze, you know, everything gets the bronze doesn't lie. I mean, that's the ultimate test because you can make a wax and it looks really good. And then you send it through and it comes out in the metal and boy, every flaw that you thought you had taken care of starts to show. And then it needs cleaned up in the metal. So I am kind of gauging, I can see a break right through here. I can see the break in the light. So it kind of just looks like a speed bump to me. So I know that I can, I should probably come back to that, take another look and maybe what I have to do is kind of smooth it. Okay. So that already looks better from as far as the light goes. I can see that that took care of that part of the break, but you know, I got to go back and just double check some things and make sure that's right. And once this is all done, we're going to really crisp up our edges. So where I have folds and stuff like that, we're going to get some of our sharper tools and go in there and redefine them. When things really begin to get smoothed out, you're going to see those nuances that you don't want to see in your casting. These lights are very important at that time, that light and that light, you can see how it creates a shadow right here, like a halftone. So we have our highlights coming in from the sides. And as we turn this, that changes accordingly. Yeah. So one of the things that I'm trying to do right now is to try and clean this up. So like, if there's a shape that's kind of round, I'm going to want to create like a round shape and some of the clay moves over in that regard, like that. Here's this muscle here. So I'm just going to kind of clean that up so it's, it's smoother. You know, I don't have, this would be an obvious bump in the casting. And so I'm just doing the fine work at this point. These are, you know, what separate the minors from the majors as far as a baseball term. And after you kind of rake that back down, don't dig in too hard. If you've got plaster, that might be an issue. Hydrostone, maybe not so much. So I'm back to the hog's hair brush. This is pretty short. This is only like a quarter inch bristles. I've kind of beaten it down over time, just from a lot of use. And I'm applying some of that lighter fluid here. And I'm going to see a break because the more that I use this brush, you know, my vision, I'm looking at it like this. I'm catching the light coming like this and just breaking over the edge and creating this half tone. Move your hand in front of the light source, and sometimes you can see the shadow. And then when you see the light coming over it, maybe you don't. So, you know, maybe put on some gloves if you're concerned about getting petroleum distillates or whatever it's on your fingers. But I'm just going to use my fingertip to very softly swirl this edge just so subtly to help conceal that edge. And now I can do my little test and watch for the shadow break. You'll know for sure if you got it or not when you do a casting. But by then, you know, that may not be favorable. The truth is, is like even in the casting, you can still clean it up. It's not the end of the world. Where our seam line is going to be from the mold, we'll still have to clean that up. This is just less work to get it right the first time because every cast you make after this will need cleaned up if you missed it. By this point, I don't know if you can see that very well. Some of my clay has been broken down and dissolved into the lighter fluid base, but it's still in there. And I can drag at least a little bit over the plaster and kind of replicate brush marks to just make your surface look more homogenous with the texture. So that's what that's about. And here's another tip. So I got this little flashlight. You get this at like a dollar store or something. And if your light sources aren't quite hitting it the way you need to, kind of create your own environment. And again, I'm just trying to hit the light, not directly, you know, like the way I'm looking at it, but to kind of create a halftone by creating the light from the side. And if I move it back and forth this way, you'll be able to see whether it's smooth or not. And I can see where I'm having trouble getting that clay down in one area right there. The next step would be some of these folds. I don't want to go really deep with these folds, but I feel like in some areas I'm going to need to, to create a little more visual interest. And I'm getting a sharp tool. One technique is to just kind of go down and don't drag a consistent line straight through, but to just kind of in one area, go a little deeper. And what I did here with my knife, this is pretty advanced, is just kind of twist it as you're dragging it for a second. Like you're kind of fishtailing with your knife, but on a straight path. And it's so slight that it just opened that up. And I'm just doing it right there. Not enough to make it go all the way down. And I'll do it again on the next fold. And I'll get my fine brush. And this is for people that want to take their sculptures to the next level. A whole nother level. So that just adds a little more visual interest. I don't know if you can see that, that well. So I could go deeper in here into some of these recessed areas to really hollow it out. But you know, when you create a cavity like that, it's very difficult for the silicone to come out. And depending on the grade of silicone that you use, it may tear. And again, like, you know, this is much deeper. And this is not quite so deep. Something to really think about is, let's just say this piece of wood represents a type of cross section from the mold. And that's in there. Well, if this is the rubber, and you're casting material in here, this is such a small point. Your casting material never wants to stay on there. It would rather stay on a flat plane. So this is going to represent a weak point if your material casts over it. And especially in waxes. When you're trying to cast a wax, this part gets hotter faster, for obvious reasons, than the thicker part. So the wax doesn't solidify on there. And you can pull a wax out and have maybe, you know, a quarter of an inch thick, and this will be paper thin. So if you want to go that deep, there's your risk. But if you only go so deep, you imagine cutting the tip off of this. That's where I'm at with this. So suggesting it, you know, without actually doing it, is the way I like to approach it. There's not much risk of getting shell in here, like with a bronze casting. But here, you could get shell stuck down in there, and your tooler may miss it. And you'll end up having shell in there when you do your patina, you'll see white shell. Or they have to get in there and dig it out, and dig and dig and dig, and scratch up the bronze. Or it'll show in your foundry cost, because it's a much more complicated piece. It requires more time to get it up to par. So I'm all in favor of suggesting the depth without actually doing it. Unless, of course, that's what your piece is about. So I'm just going around and trying to make sure that these areas are cleaned up at this point. This was where the old seam line was. And there was a seam line here. And I want to get that as tight as possible, so that I don't have to deal with that in subsequent castings. And, you know, you'll see other details here that you want to get cleaned up. So those are the tips. And I'll be back after I get those cleaned up, and we can take another look at it, and see what the next step is. Okay, so right now you can see that I have cleaned up all of the details. I've used my wooden knife to make some deeper creases and select areas. Not everywhere. Just to suggest a little more depth there, for example. Yep. And like right there, and right there. And then I took my dental tool. It's kind of shaped like a like a putter, you know. And that has a very sharp angle, so I can put that on like so, and clean up the edges a little more nicely. I've used the flashlight to get some of those half tones, just to see where where I'm at, where I can see the break, where I'm feathering the clay onto the plaster. And after I did all that, I went ahead and added a little more fabric here, between the neck and the shoulder, and brought it over and buried it under the hair. You can see some spider webs. And I touched up some of the little air bubbles that appeared on her face. And over some of my seam lines, you'll see some of this clay. So if you have some deep areas, use a flat edge tool to go over it, to kind of pack your clay in per se. And then use your stiffer hair brush to knock that back, and then the sable brush to finish that off. And then to just tie it all together, I put a clear coat on it. So the clear coat that I used is the polycrylic. It goes on nicely, and what that does is helps make this tacky surface smooth again. I mean, let's say resistant to the touch. It's not sticky anymore. One solvent adheres to another, I suppose. And there's a little bit of tooth to it. So if you want to do multiple layers and kind of gloss it up, you know, that's up to you. And this also helps when you're putting on the silicone. Putting on the silicone. In some areas, you may need to get a little deeper, and you may have a tendency to kind of strike. This clear coat helps these little bristles not go into the clay. It, you know, makes it a little more resistant to impact for the bristles. I do this with the oil-based clay. I don't necessarily do it with the water-based clay, and you find out what works for you. But I just want to point out that this isn't a best practice anyway. You know, we want to sweep the silicone in when we get to that part. And in some areas, if you just can't get, you know, you're going to have to push the silicone in there, or take and put it on your glove and wipe it in. But really try to brush all of your silicone in. Now that I've applied the polyacrylic, this sculpture is ready to go for the mold making step. I'm going to use my working model to make the arms. They're the same, essentially. So I'll get going on those, and when I get those arms done, my next video will be of molding. So there you go. Please like, please subscribe, please share it with a friend. This all helps me continue to bring videos to you, and I thank you for your patronage.