How to Sculpt Hands Out of Polymer Clay for Beginners

Hey there, I'm Ace of Clay and today I'm going to teach you how to sculpt hands out of polymer clay with and without armature. Let's get started. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. The first method I'm going to show you is how to make the hands without armature wire. You're just going to take a piece of clay, like so, I'm using Super Sculpey Original in gray, and I'm just going to shape out this sort of rectangular shape and then I'm going to bring it to a blunt point. You can also use a flexible clay like Cosclay to prevent the fingers from breaking after it's baked. Otherwise, just be gentle. Once I have the general shape figured out, I'm just going to cut off the tip and start carving out the fingers with a blade. I'm going to add the four fingers first and then we're going to take each finger and gently stretch it out and get rid of those sharp edges and roll them into cylinders. As you continue shaping the fingers, you want to make sure they have a slight taper so they're thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top. So do that with each finger until you get them to a shape that you like. And don't be afraid to bend the other fingers out of the way so that you have more room to work. During this step, make sure you keep the fingers at the proper length, so just trim them down when they get too long and then, of course, check it against your own hands too. The middle finger is the longest, followed by the ring finger, then the index finger, pinky, and thumb. Sculpting hands isn't a quick process if you want them to look good. Even though the footage here is sped up for time's sake, I want to show you just how much finessing and adjusting goes into just creating the fingers. I'm constantly stretching them out more, cutting them down, stretching them out again, cutting them down. Just do this over and over again until you get to a point that you like. Now that the first four fingers have pretty much been established, it's time to start working on the thumb. To start the thumb, I'm rolling out an elongated sort of teardrop shape that's going to be the thumb finger itself and the ball of the hand. Now I want to find the right spot for it and then press the ball of the hand into the rest of it. After attaching the thumb, I want to fill in the gap between it and the palm with some more clay. And now I can start blending. And while I'm blending, if I see any more gaps, it's time to work our way onto the palm. We're going to start blending that ball in. And at this point, if you're making a cartoon character, you can stop here and this is a pretty sufficient looking hand. But we're going to keep going and make it a little more realistic. As you'll see with both of these hand tutorials, the majority of the process is refining and there really isn't a set of rules for the right way to do this. My goal is just to show you the proper form of a hand and you can take that and use whatever process gets you to your desired result. Determining the correct length for the thumb is very important because if it's just a little too short or a little too long, it will look weird. I like to compare the length of it to the length of the pinky on the hand that I'm sculpting. So from the base of the thumb to the tip, it's about as long as the pinky. Now if we're going to be bending the fingers and putting them into a different position, I'm going to create the joints in each of the fingers. Each one has two, so I'm pressing my blade into the finger but not going all the way through. This will give it a nice sharp bend when I pose it at each of the joints. And the further you press in your blade, the sharper the bend. Once my fingers are positioned, I'm going to use this rubber shaper to smooth out the surface. I'm just going to do this over and over again and add the wrinkles at each of the joints. And please keep in mind this is a hand tutorial for beginners, so the hand I'm creating is pretty stylized and simple. My goal isn't to make one that is super realistic. And if you know how to make a better hand than this, I don't know why you clicked on this video. Now for the fingernails, I'm going to use my spoon tool and sort of gouge in the shape of each nail and then smooth out the top to bring it over the edge of the finger just a little bit to make it look like a fingernail. Now if you want to add another level of realism, you can put on some veins. I'm using this tiny snake of clay to do just that, and I'm going to carefully blend them into the back of the hand. Once the veins are blended in, I'm just going to give the surface a gentle wipe and tap to sort of merge them more with the back of the hand. And this is the step where you just use that rubber shaper to your heart's content and bring the detail up to the point that matches your sculpture. And there we go, a hand out of polymer clay with no wire armature. All right, we're going to take a quick break from our video to talk about our sponsor, Squarespace. Whether you're a big business, a small business, a freelance designer, or a sculptor like me, Squarespace has everything you need to showcase your brand, sell your products, and more. I've been using Squarespace for over five years now, even before they started sponsoring me, and I could not be happier with my experience. Their products are so streamlined and so easy to use that managing my website aceofclay.com is truly a breeze. Some of my favorite features include the portfolios and galleries. In my line of work, I have to share my work with the world, and Squarespace's beautiful portfolios allow me to do just that. I have an online shop where I can sell plushes, stickers, prints, sculpting supplies, and more. And Squarespace makes everything so easy, and I'm not kidding when I say that. I can track my inventory, print shipping labels, I get notification when something sells. Everything I need is right there in the platform. You can even sell digital downloads. They really have everything you need to start selling online. And at this day and age, if you're an online business, you've got to have a social media presence, and Squarespace allows you to integrate all of your social media into any page of your website. So if all of this sounds good, head on over to squarespace.com, start a free trial, and when you're ready to launch your website, go to squarespace.com slash aceofclay to save 10% on your purchase of a website or domain using my code aceofclay. Okay, let's start hand number two, but this time using armature wire. You're of course going to want to select wire that is to scale with the hand you're sculpting. I'm making a pretty small hand, so I'm just going to use this floral wire. This method will give you a more durable hand and allow for more extreme finger positioning. For the first step, I'm going to shape out the entire hand with my wire. I'm going to start with the side and then work my way into a loop to create the pinky finger. Once I have my loop, I'm going to twist it into itself to create the structure for the pinky. Once the pinky is done, I'm going to loop my way into the ring finger, establish a proper length, and repeat the same process as the pinky. We're going to do this until looks like this. Now we're going to add our clay. I'm going to press it onto the back of the hand and roll over the excess to the front. At this point, I'm not worried about how smooth anything is looking yet. I just want to make sure my form is correct. So I'm going to place the clay where it needs to be and we'll smooth everything out later. To create the thumb, we're going to use the same process we used to create the thumb on our first hand by rolling out that elongated teardrop shape and then we're going to press it into the hand and embed that wire inside. Now we're going to add our clay to the rest of the fingers, one snake of clay at a time. Using snakes of clay that are slightly longer than you need will allow you to overlap them onto the back of the hand to simultaneously create knuckles. Now the wire I used is pretty flexible so repositioning the fingers as I go isn't a big deal. If you're using a stronger wire that isn't as flexible, you should put the fingers into their final position first and then add the clay. Once our wire is covered in clay, it's time to start refining. And just to reiterate from earlier, the majority of the process is refining and there really isn't a set of rules for the right way to do this. My goal is just to show you the proper form of a hand with armature wire and you can take this and use whatever process gets you to your desired result. And as you can see in both of these tutorials, we are creating very standard looking hands. You can use this as your base and then tweak it any way you need. For example, making the joints and knuckles bigger will make the hand look older, that kind of thing. Now one of the biggest struggles with sculpting hands is that you have to handle one finished side that's not baked while you're working on the other. Be mindful to be gentle. You don't have to have a death grip on it. Accidentally dropping it onto your table is a lot better than smashing the back while you're working on the front. Now I'm going to continue filling filling in any weird gaps with more clay. Now using my super poker, I'm going to poke in the wrinkles at each of the joints. To help me smooth the surface with my rubber shaper later, I'm going to brush on a very small amount of bake and bond. This will make the surface way brush on the back of the hand and repeat the process that we did on the other side. Now for some more little finger wrinkles. To create the fingernails, I'm going to press in the shape of each nail with my spoon tool and then use the back of my spoon tool to swipe the top of each nail to smooth them out and bring a little bit of fingernail over the edge. And they're done! That's how I sculpt hands out of polymer clay with and without armature wire. I hope you found this video informative and it makes you like sculpting hands just a little bit more. And before we close out, be sure to check out aceofclay.com to see my all new line of sculpting supplies, hidden world merch, stickers, art prints, vinyl decals, and more. Thanks so much for watching and being here. Be sure to check me out on Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok at aceofclay and I will see you in the next video. Thanks for watching!