Hello everyone and welcome to Clayformations. Thanks for stopping by. Today we're going to
be forming some clay into Bruiser the Guppy. All right, first we start out with epoxy sculpt
around a steel ball. That'll give me something to attach the clay to a real rigid surface after it
dries. It doesn't need to be perfect, just real rough, just enough for the clay to adhere to.
After I attached the back tail, I realized that the fins are a little bit too big, so I
made them a little smaller. I'm going to make his dorsal fin look real big.
I'm using thin sheets of polymer clay to cover the whole surface up with the
with the base layer. The thing is right now, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to
really have any details to it. It's just bulking it out. You don't want to add too much detail in
the beginning. The only thing you have to remember is to make sure that the
the surface is all even. You don't want too many thick spots, too many thin spots. You want it to
be kind of pretty much universal and even. Okay, now I'm going to put his eyes on there. That way
you can see where to put the eyebrows and the mouth. This guy's going to have a little bit of
an attitude, as you'll see as we continue on building up the brow part. Now we're going to
give him a big bottom lip. A little tough guy. Here I'm blocking out the gill area where his
gills will be. Sometimes it's hard to know just how thick something should be, how big something
should be, especially when you're working on something like a face because it has to have
some type of symmetry to it, if that's the intent. Sometimes you can do things asymmetrical
because it's cartoonish, but if you're making a certain, you know, type of personality,
or even in a cartoon face, you have to have a little bit of symmetry. Sometimes that's difficult
to do. Center line there. Yeah, that's it. He needs more attitude. As I've, you know,
continued to do sculptures, I find that my style has a lot of sketch lines to them,
and it's not so much detail. It's more of a sort of a marking point to create a flow
so everything runs in the same direction. It's not totally necessary, but for some reason that's
the style I tend to adhere to. Maybe that's why I like the rake tool so much.
Looks like it needed a little more clay right there, and even more. This little guy's so small,
I really couldn't use my fingers very much to smooth it out, so I had to use all the stylus
tools. Looks pretty good. If you guys notice, I keep going back and forth too a lot. I'll go back
and forth as I check to see both sides are looking symmetrical. Add some texture to his
bottom lip. I think the reason why I do it this way is because when you work on a sculpture,
it has to be consistent. You can't, in other words, once you begin a specific style,
you have to continue with that style. You can't have one part looking one way and another part
of the sculpture looking another way. Otherwise, the composition is off, and it doesn't really
work. It looks kind of awkward and unbalanced. It's funny, I'm noticing the bottom of his chin
looks like a walnut. That wasn't intentional, by the way. It just seemed to happen. Okay,
adding some more texture. A little bit more of his face is coming out. I wanted to make his
gills look kind of spiky and feathery. Sometimes you have to use two stylus tools in order to make
that work. Okay, creating a center line underneath. Good lord, it still looks like a walnut.
What was I thinking? Of course, maybe he swallowed a walnut. With his attitude and everything,
he may have just swallowed a big old walnut, and that's the reason why he's so grumpy.
Okay, what I'm doing here is I'm getting out some, you know, the spines that are on a fish's
fins and dorsals. I remember going fishing when I was a kid, and I was always afraid of the
spikes that were on the tips of the fins and the flippers. I wanted to make his fins really,
really, really thin, but I haven't really figured out how to do that yet. I think maybe what I would
have to use is some kind of plastic or acrylic sheets in order to get it to work, but the problem
is when you put it in the oven, that could possibly melt. So I'll have to figure something
out on how to do that because I would like to do more fish. I have I have fun making aquatic
animals. So right here, I'm trying to make it as thin as I can. I think I change where they connect
to the body. They just didn't look right to me. After a while, I think I go back and change it.
Now I'm adding some clay to his dorsal fin. When you get in with the rest of the body,
it's a little thin there at the edge, so I'm making a little ridge where it goes into the
top of the spinal cord. I have to hold my other hand to make sure I don't move it too much.
Texture to the whole rest of his chubby little body. It goes really fast this way, but I have
to say when you're doing it, it takes a long time, but the results are worth it. The watercolor brush
takes down the harsh edges. All right, now we do the tail. I wish I could have made those fins just
a little bit thinner now, but oh well. We learn as we go. By the way, if you've made it this far,
if you like what you see and you'd like to see more, please don't forget to hit the thumbs up
button or a like and subscribe. I have a lot of nice things coming up in the future. I'll add
some teeth just to give it that little extra attitude, like you really don't want to mess
with this guy. Always make sure if you're adding teeth or fingernails to always put a
a base hole in it first, because if you don't, it will displace too much of the clay and usually
ends up distorting what you've already sculpted. It's pretty good. You just push the clay up
into the teeth to secure them in there. All right, let's bake this little guy. Yes, I did let it cool
down. The metal isn't hot. All right, let's take it off of that and put it on here and get it ready
to paint. Solid paint collection. All right, we'll start off with a cream base, kind of a neutral
color. If you ever look at a fish, their designs are absolutely amazing. Each one is a work of art.
There's so many colors and variations. It really looks neat. So here's a color shift blue
and mixed with the base color of the cream color. It kind of gives it sort of a greenish tint
and the color shift paints are really vibrant. I'll add a little bit of purple
color shift. Folk art brand, by the way. You know what types they are. All right, now what I'm doing
here is I'm doing a little bit of a black wash to bring out some of the textures and really darken
some of the recessed areas. Really vibrant dark purple. That really makes it pop. Color to the
gills and a little bit of dry brush. Now for the eyes. I figured I'd give him kind of a red eye to
really make him look intimidating. Sorry, it's a little out of focus there.
At least my fingers aren't focused. I'll give him a little tiny yellow dot.
That one actually worked. Usually when I do the dot, I usually end up messing up the second eye.
I don't know why. It always happens that way. I'll give him a little black, tiny little black dot.
Okay, looks like he's ready. He's not finished yet. Now we got to give him something to swim in.
So we're going to make a base for him. Mixing up some epoxy sculpt. Not epoxy sculpt, epoxy.
Okay, the hole that I made for the base and then I realized that I drilled the hole all the way
through so it really didn't stand straight. So I have to use my little clamp there to hold it up.
After it dries, I realized that all the epoxy seeped into the bottom and made him
wobble. That's not going to work. There's the culprit. I know what to do. Went out to the
garage and ground it down so now it's nice and flat. Now we're ready. Straight, swimming the
right way. Okay, now we take some tin foil and we bulk up the edges of the base. This is where I have
to be careful because I don't want to hit the spines either. Those sticks there will be for
coral towers. Now I mixed up some epoxy sculpt and I started putting it all over the place.
I had a lot of fun doing this because it was so random and so full of texture that it really
didn't matter no matter where no matter where I put the clay it was going to be all right because
it was just going to look like a rock. I really like epoxy sculpt because it's so durable but it
takes so long for it to cure. This works really well too by the way. You wad up a piece of tin foil
and you just roll it over and push it into the clay. It really, really makes a convincing rock
formation. This batch here will probably take about, well really it takes about 24 hours for
the epoxy sculpt to fully cure. So you get to a certain point and you just have to stop and let
it cure. The most inexpensive tool you can own is a tin foil. Up the coral towers. Oh and by the way
once you start using your paintbrushes and epoxy sculpt like this you can't use them for anything
else. The good part about it though is the more you use it the more texturized the paintbrush
becomes so it's almost a kind of a win-win. Although you can't use it for paint anymore
the more you use it the better it gets for a coral tower. Texturizing it with the brush.
Yeah I really like the way they rock. With the base coat of brown always start out with your
dark colors first. You bring out the lighter colors as you texturize it and dry brush.
Here's the second lighter color light brown. Dry brushing it on bringing out the details
bringing out the texture. Then the final coat will be an even lighter color and there you just
want to do the highlights just enough to bring out the there it is right there just enough to
bring out those highlights on the top. In turn gives the rock more depth. By the way be careful
not to hit your original subject of the sculpture which is the fish. Mr. Bruiser I'm sure he wouldn't
like any of that paint getting all over him. He might bite you. Okay looks like we got that pretty
much done but as I was doing it it still lacked something. Still needed a little more. I wasn't sure
so I went and got some shells. By the way shell shop in Laurel Bay California you can get all
the shells you want from microscopic to huge. I just grabbed some interesting ones and put them
all over the place. Still need something more so let's put some seaweed in there some dried up
seaweed. Put that one there. Now we'll put a couple more right there. He doesn't want to stick.
Okay one more. Why not? Okay I think that about does it. No we need one more. We need one more
shell. Cover up that spot right there. Sometimes you just need one more shell. All right let's call
this big guy done. The ruler of the pond. Nobody gets in his way. I wouldn't get in his way.
He looks mean. I think the base turned out pretty good. All right everybody thanks for hanging out
we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
