Learn to Sculpt: My Favorite Clay Sculpting Tools

So I'm in the shop today and I'm going to be doing a quick video on the different types of basic sculpting tools. This is a video for beginners also. If you're interested in sculpting and you want to know like what tools that you need to get started. So these are just some of the tools that I use on almost every sculpture project. Before we begin hit that subscribe button because I'm going to be putting out a lot more footage on different projects I've been working on this year and I'll be putting out more tutorials and tips on art especially sculpture. So that being said let's get started. So when I sculpt in clay I always think about two different types of tools that I will need on every project. One is a tool to carve which would be something like this. The other is a tool to cut when I have to get through a lot of clay at one time. A tool like this. So maybe if I'm using this it takes a little bit of strength. This is high quality Roma plastilena clay. Check out my video on that if you haven't seen it. But what I do is you know I may put clay or let's say I just put a piece together especially if it's a little bit bigger piece and there's something I don't like like an arm or I need to take the head off. What I'll have to do is I'll have to go in there and I'll have to chop that off without damaging everything else. If you were to go up to it like this and just tear it off you would damage your sculpture. Sometimes the sculpture is good you just have one part of it that you want to fix and I do that a lot. I'm a perfectionist and most of the time I'm very confident while I'm sculpting or painting too you know drawing that every once in a while there is a mistake. We all make mistakes and you need to be able to go in there and fix that as efficiently and quickly as possible without damaging the rest of your piece. So cutting carving and cutting. Now a tool like this you know it might have a wedge on one end so you can really go in there and you can chop things apart on a flat surface. A flat clean surface is very important. Don't have any dust or particles because that gets all caught up in the clay and if you get a piece of I'll show you here say you got this is a little piece of something that gets smashed into the clay when we begin carving which I'm going to talk about here in a second it causes problems where we can't carve smoothly and then it just damages the whole surface of the piece. So now let's talk about carving tools. A basic sculpting tool and beginners should start with this would just be a tool that has a rounded edge and then on one side and then on the other side a more square edge. Now this one's a little bit different but you want you just want something that comes at right angle so that you can get in there and you can maybe start see here with the more narrow cut. Now a lot of tools will have little wires around this is actually a wire but they'll have smaller wires around that. This one however has grooves kind of hard to see there let's see if I can focus in. So this one has little grooves and I'll show you what happens. Now I'm going to carve at the side that does not have the grooves very smooth. Now let's try the other side that has those grooves in there. See that texture? So this is a must-have something similar to this if you're beginning sculpting. I use these two types of tools in every project. Now let me talk about a couple other different types of tools that are basic to sculpture. This almost looks like some medieval weapon but this guy here with these hooks this is really handy if you're doing little details like the eyes and you want to go in and just carve out a little circular thing like that you know or maybe you want to clean up the edges of something. See that? So this guy is very handy. These are kind of hard to come by. This is something else similar. You can find this stuff on websites that sell dental tools but you'll get good stuff. It'll be expensive but you'll get good quality tools. See this guy? You can come in there and really carve at that clay. This one's really good for cleaning up stuff. So yeah basically dental tools but Sculpture House, Hobby Lobby. I don't know if Hobby Lobby actually sells that stuff but you'll have to go check that out. This isn't really a video on where to buy the tools. I'm just doing a basic overview of you know tools that everyone should have on a sculpture project. Get to that in a second. This guy, these little tools are one of my favorite because I love little details. I love going in and making different types of texture. So this tool is basically like this one here except you come in and it's just very small pieces at a time and you can like crosshatch. You might go one way and go the other way doing something like that and then you can smooth it out. That'll give you a very smooth surface. So I love little details. One thing I need to talk about for this tool is you'll see here on the end. This is wood by the way if you can't tell. See that? It's almost like a paddle or airplane propeller. You'll see a lot of sculpting tools or people who are beginning. They're starting out and they'll have like a whole assortment of wooden tools you know that have different edges to move the clay around. Personally I'm not a fan of those and if you really want to try that what you can do is you can actually pick up these at the hardware store. You can get a pack of these brushes for like a dollar. If you look at the end of these they're very similar to that wooden propeller shape that you see in a lot of sculpting tools. Where you'd really use something like this is if you had like let's say here let's say this is the body of something and there's the arm. You know he's got an arm on him now. Usually my work's a little bit better than this. Then you could come in and maybe you want to smooth that out. That's usually what these types of tools are used for kind of blending the clay. I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with sculpting they've never done it before. They just assume that that's what you use. Sculptures with water-based clay this is what you use. This is oil-based clay. Once again this is very high quality clay I talked about and you know this is just the good stuff. So you need to have good tools. They don't need to be expensive. Just grab a few of these basic sculpting tools if you're trying to learn how to do this. Last tool I'll talk about is it's similar to the end of the brush or you know that is these little rubber tip tools and these are for going in and smoothing out creases. If you're a beginner I would recommend just trying one out because it'll come in handy later. Now if you want to see this in action go check out my video on sculpting hands. You'll be seeing me make these little tiny hands with this tool and you can see how that's done. But this was pretty simple. I hope this was interesting for all my viewers here. That's it for today. Thanks for watching. Subscribe to my channel. I know you're expecting a lot of good content. Let me tell you it is coming your way. But that's it for today. See you guys next time.