Sculpture Research 1

Creating character prosthetics in silicone - part 2: preparing for and sculpting the prosthetic appliance

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1) pick out any features and details that you want to translate onto your sculpture with pencil so you don't place any natural lines in the wrong place

2) Use one reference photo for general inspiration to get the look and feel of the character then use others when needed to look up certain bits.

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3) Start by roughing out the face you want by placing sausages of clay and using mostly the hands as tools - follow the natural lines of the face cast so everything is natural and blended well. No need to be neat just marking out where the main shapes will be.

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4) Sketch in rough lines with tool to begin to mark out more winkles and folds

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5) Use a tool to drag over the surface of all the clay in a crosshatch motion to get rid of any lumps and bumps and smooth the sausages together

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6) Reduce the size of the tool to get in more detail and refinement and continue to crosshatch over whole surface.

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6) Use a serrated loop tool to continue refining and smoothing out the surface.

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7) Then use a wire brush over whole surface to refine and smooth even more.

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8) Use ligter fluid to finish refining the sculpture but keep putting the detail back in it it's getting lost.

9) Leave the sculpture a few hours for the lighter fluid to completely evaporate off.

10) Put talc over the entire surface to brush off any beads of clay

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11) Layer the entire piece with surface texture by continually talcing and racking it away. Human skin is textured all over and by creating surface texture pores etc. will then look more natural and the whole thing is more real looking.

12) You lay plastic over the piece and draw the tool over this to create very soft lines

13) Add in fine lines and wrinkles at this stage then keep going over with powder and wire brush.

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14) For pore texture push marks in with corner of a tool ten soften with wire brush again. Remember pores are more elliptical than perfect circles.

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15) Make a slurry with a mixture of clay and lighter fluid to create realistic bumps and raised areas of skin- as the lighter fluid evaporates these will shrink and look very realistic.

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I think this section of the DVD series will be extremely helpful in creating our old age face sculpt. It goes through every step of the sculpting process detailing procedure, tools and materials. The makeup he was creating is a little more of an exaggerated age than our sculpt but the techniques involved are still the same and will not only be useful in this but in all future sculpting.