The BEST Beginner Friendly Painting Techniques for Polymer Clay Sculptures!

Hey everyone, Ace of Clay here. Welcome back to my channel and welcome to another video. Today I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite polymer clay painting tips and tricks. This video is only about painting polymer clay. I'm going to share some of the tips that I use regularly when I make my sculptures. We're going to go through the priming process, painting process, some various painting techniques, and then of course finishing, and then I'm going to teach you how to paint an eye. And then before we get started, I just want to let you know that all the products and tools that I'll be using in this video are listed in the description box below, along with my affiliate links if you want to purchase anything. Now the first thing I want to talk about in this video, of course, is what kind of paint and brushes to use. In my opinion, I think water-based acrylic paints are your best bet. I like to use FolkArt matte acrylics. These are my favorite, my go-to that I've been using since day one. These are just some colors that I'll be using in this demonstration today. And you always want to use the matte version of the acrylic paint. It does come in various finishes like satin and glossy, but those can kind of look streaky when they're done. I think matte paints blend the best and they have the smoothest finish, so definitely want to look at the matte ones when you're picking out your paint. Now for paint brushes, I like to use synthetic brushes that are made for acrylic paint. I think that just makes sense. It's what I go to for everything. These are my larger brushes that I use. They have huge handles like Bob Ross style here, but I use these for, you know, large surface areas for painting my bases and all that. And then as far as my other brushes go, I don't like to spend a lot of money on paint brushes because I am very hard on them. I do have a couple more expensive ones like these Artist Loft green ones here. These are a little bit more expensive and I like these for their detail brushes. But as far as anything else goes, like these gray ones here, these are just a multi-pack that I got from Joann Fabrics. I prefer flat tip brushes over round ones just because I think they give me the coverage that I'm looking for and I think they're good for painting the surface of a sculpture. I'm not painting on a canvas. I'm painting a three-dimensional piece. There's really no right or wrong answer to this. And then I always like to keep on hand some older brushes that are a little worn down and used just because I like using these for dabbing and, you know, dry brushing so I don't ruin my good ones. Now if I had to recommend brushes that I think every sculptor should have on hand, I would definitely say a medium-sized flat tip like this, a smaller flat tip, a medium filbert, and then the finest detail brush you can find. I think these four brushes alone are enough to get any sculpture painting job done if your sculptures are the size of mine which is typically anywhere from 8 to 12 inches tall. And then other supplies you'll need when you're ready to paint your sculpture is a dedicated cup with water for you to rinse your brushes as you use them. And I like to use some just regular aluminum foil as my paint palette because I can just ball it up and throw it out when I'm done. All right, now that that's taken care of, for all of the demonstrations in this video I will be using Super Sculpey Original Polymer Clay. This is my favorite clay that I've been using since I started and I have had no reason to use any other brand. This is just what I use. I'm not paid to say this, I'm just being honest. This is Super Sculpey Original in gray and I think it works amazing with all the painting techniques I'll be showing you today. All right, now let's get into the painting process and talk about priming. Personally, I do not prime my pieces because I don't feel the need to. You can paint polymer clay straight out of the oven. But if you do prefer to prime your pieces before you paint them, I would recommend a brush-on gesso or just straight up white acrylic paint. I do not recommend any aerosols for priming just because they can stay tacky and ruin your sculpture before you even start painting it. So definitely stick to the brush-on ones. There may be some aerosol primers out there that work, but I do not have personal experience with them, so I'm not comfortable recommending them. All right, let's talk gesso. The only difference between gesso and white acrylic paint is that gesso is a little bit thinner and it dries a little harder than acrylic paint would. Here's a piece that I have put some gesso on already. It's nice and dry. You can see how smooth it is. And then this is what it looks like going on. Like I said, it is very similar to plain white acrylic paint and a few coats will have a nice solid white finish on your sculpture that is ready for your next layer of paint. And again, yes, you can just use regular white acrylic paint to prime your pieces. Okay, now I want to get into washes and antiquing. A wash is simply watered-down acrylic paint that you brush onto your surface, let it get into all the nooks and crannies of your sculpture, and then you wipe off the excess with a paper towel or your fingertip. Here are two little samples that I've put a wash on. I typically like to use a darker version of the original color to create my wash. Like so right here, I use this nice robin's egg blue for the base color and then the wash is just a darker version of that. And then for this one, I used a green color and the wash is just a darker green. This brings out your details and gives more interest to the surface of your sculpture. So let's demonstrate it. I've just got a blank gray piece of clay here that hasn't been painted yet and I'm going to brush on a black wash. I have my water close by and just want to water down my paint a little bit. Once I've watered it down to my liking, I'm just going to get it on the surface, get it into all those detailed parts, all the recessed areas. You do want to do this relatively quickly before the paint dries. Like that. Then I'm going to take my paper towel or you can use your fingertip too. I'm going to brush off the surface like that. And the wash should stay mainly in the details and wipe off easily from the surface. Now if you're worried about watering down your acrylic paint too much where you start loosening the binders and then it just becomes a big wet mess, you can also use acrylic glazing medium. This can be combined with your paint and water to stabilize your wash and it'll go on just fine. Glazing medium is just essentially acrylic paint with no pigment in it. So all acrylic paint starts as this stuff and then they add the pigments and all that and get your favorite colors. Next up, let's talk antiquing. Antiquing uses the same process as a wash. The only difference is your desired outcome is that your piece looks older. Here are two samples that I put together. This one has been antiqued of course and this is what it looked like before I antiqued it. Again, I just put a brown wash on the surface and brushed off the excess and it turned out like this. Now when you're antiquing something you're going to want to use a sort of antique color like brown or black or something that's different than the original color of the surface. This is sort of adding grime and age to the look of it. Instead of using just a darker version of the color that's already on there like you would with just a regular wash, you're going to use a different color that's going to antique it. So let's demonstrate this. Got my brown paint here and we're going to mix a little bit of black into it and of course water it down. That looks about right. Brush it onto our surface here and I'm just going to dab off the excess on the surface just like that. And then once this layer dries I'm going to go ahead and repeat this process as many times as I want to get this looking as old as I want it to. You can use this technique to create faux copper and patina finishes. You can really do whatever you want with it. Now one thing I want to mention when you're antiquing or using washes is you may want to include an acrylic extender. And basically what that is is it's an acrylic medium that you add to your acrylic paint that slows the drying process. Acrylic paints dry super fast and adding an extender will kind of make it act like an oil paint so it gives you more time to manipulate it before it dries. Next up let's talk dry brushing one of my favorite painting techniques ever. It is so satisfying if you do it right and it just has such a beautiful result. So dry brushing is essentially taking a very little bit of paint and brushing it quickly onto the surface of your piece to bring out all of the raised details in your sculpture. So here are two examples right here that I've done. This is just a darker purple that has been dry brushed with a lighter purple and then I've got a nice true blue color that I dry brushed with a lighter blue. So to do this I'm going to demonstrate on this little gray wood grain here and we're going to use some white. Now to dry brush I just want to saturate my brush in paint like so and then I want to brush off as much of the excess as possible. You can even use a paper towel for this. Get it nice and dry essentially and once you get it to that point you're going to just swiftly brush it on the surface of your sculpture like that. See how it just picked up all that detail right there? It takes a little bit of practice but once you get the hang of it there is not one sculpture you're going to make without dry brushing. And then of course the deeper your details are for dry brushing or a wash the more they're going to show up when you use this technique. And then my favorite thing to do is to use a wash in combination with dry brushing to really heighten the look of your piece. Got my little example here. Of course the wash has already been put on to darken the recessed areas, create some shadows. Now I'm just going to dry brush some white on the surface. I could also use light blue if I wanted to but this will show better just for demonstration's sake. And I'm going to dry brush just like that. Now you're really heightening the details on your piece. And then once this dries you can go over and do another coat of that same color or you can even lighten your color even more to really make it pop. Next let's talk about top coats and finishing. Now acrylic paint doesn't require a top coat or varnish. I don't personally add one unless I want to change the finish of the piece. So if I want my piece to be satin or glossy then I'll use a varnish. If I don't then I'll just leave it as is. And then I've got some samples here. This is just black acrylic paint that has dried on the surface of my clay. I have not added any top coat to this. This is just how it looks when it dries. Super matte, super smooth, super awesome. Next up we have a matte acrylic brush-on varnish. Now in my experience I have yet to find a perfect matte brush-on varnish. The closest I get to matte is with this dead flat varnish from Saman. So this is after the varnish and this is what it looks like before just for comparison's sake. And let's demonstrate it going on. Next up we've got satin varnish. My personal favorite satin varnish is this one by Liquitex. This is really old but it still works great. Gives us this nice true satin finish, very smooth, no brush strokes. It is very thin so you don't need a lot of it. And then last but not least we have glossy. This beautiful glossy finish was created with Americana triple thick brilliant brush-on gloss glaze. And when they say brilliant they aren't kidding. This in my opinion is the closest thing you're going to get to a finish with an acrylic brush-on varnish. Just like the name suggests it is super thick and it goes on great. Let's show what that looks like. And then now swaying away from the acrylic paint area we're going into resin. And this is if you really want to make your pieces look pretty much like glass. This is the shiniest varnish you are ever going to get. I like to use Amazing Clear Cast. This is a two-part epoxy casting resin. There's part A, part B. You mix these two together in equal parts and then you brush it on the surface of your sculpture and wait for it to dry. The finish is absolutely stunning. Here is a really old piece that I varnished in resin and as you can see it looks like glass. Another thing that I really like about resin is that when you varnish your pieces with it it is going to harden into plastic. So it is going to protect your piece, it's going to make it stronger, and it's going to look great. If you want the best glossy varnish ever on your piece you've got to use resin. Amazing Clear Cast is my go-to. And this guy I believe is from 2014 and as you can see he's held up great. Now if you're into aerosol top coats there are only two that I recommend that are compatible with polymer clay. Every other brand or type of aerosol top coat is going to stay sticky on your piece forever. So if you've got to use an aerosol top coat use PIM2 or Elmar Crystal Coat. These are recommended by really highly credible sources. Another thing I want to mention is you never want to use Mod Podge to seal your sculptures. This is not compatible with polymer clay. It's going to stay sticky forever. I know this from personal experience. Don't do it. Use Mod Podge for fabric, use it for other stuff, but do not use it to finish your polymer clay pieces. It will stay tacky and there's no way to fix it. Another thing that's going to stay tacky is nail polish. Do not use nail polish to paint your sculptures or varnish them. It will stay tacky too. Okay now the next technique I want to talk about is how to paint metallics. Now metallic paints are kind of in the realm of you get what you pay for. The more expensive the metallic paint is it's likely going to be better than the cheaper stuff. So I like to use Treasure Gold. This is by FolkArt. It is extremely high quality. The pigment is out of this world and it's a little pricey but it's worth it and it will last forever. So that's the first step to getting a good metallic finish. The next step is to paint it over black. All metallics, I don't care what you're doing, if you want an intense metallic finish you've got to paint them over black paint. So here's my little sample piece here. I'm going to go ahead and brush on a coat of that Treasure Gold in the color Platinum. Painting metallics over black is just such a satisfying process in addition to the beautiful finish you're going to get. As you can see it's got great coverage and notice the shift. Do you see how intense that shift is from the shiniest part of it to the darkest part? You're really getting a nice metallic look. In contrast here is that same metallic paint painted over a gray base. You can see the shift isn't nearly as good. Look at that. Definitely always want to paint your metallics over black. If you want a less intense shift then paint them over a lighter color. It's just really up to you and the finish you want. I always like how they look over black the best and this goes for any color metallic paint. 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It has amazing speed that has been confirmed by speed tests. NordVPN is the fastest VPN out there. You can use it on up to six devices and of course it's on every major platform. Another thing that makes a VPN great is the ability to access content that may not be available in your country. So if there's a platform or game that you can't access because of where you live just simply change your virtual location. You can get all the benefits and peace of mind from NordVPN by going to nordvpn.com slash clay to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount. Thanks again NordVPN for sponsoring this video. Now back to the project. Now last but certainly not least I'm going to show you how I paint eyes for my characters. Just a human looking eye. I've got my little sample eye here prepped with some white paint ready to go. We're going to paint the iris, the pupil, and a little reflection. So let's do a green eye just because the green paint's right in front of me. And the techniques that I'm about to show you can be used on any size human eye. Grab one of my detail brushes here and the first thing I want to do is take a medium version of the color eye that I want. So not one that's super dark and not one that's super light. This is a nice medium green. I'm going to start by placing a dot in the middle and then making a circle around that dot just so the eye is looking in the direction I want it to be. Once that's dry I'm going to go in and darken my base color with a little bit of black or whatever color you want to darken it with. You don't have to use black you can use color theory if you want. I think adding black works just fine. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint a sort of half moon shape on the top of the iris like that. Now I'm going to lighten my green color with some white. Again you can use color theory if you want. I'm just going to use white. Get a lighter version of my main green color and I'm going to paint a little C on the bottom like that. Then using a very small detail brush I'm going to paint the pupil right in the middle like that. And now for the finishing touch which I think brings the eyes to life I'm going to add a little reflection. So I'm going to do a dot off the edge of the pupil here on the right side like that. And then I'm going to do a smaller dot opposite that one the bottom of the pupil. There you go that's how I paint my eyes. Now for the other eye when you do those reflection marks like that in white you're going to want to make them exactly like this eye. Do not mirror them. If you mirror them they're going to make your character look cross-eyed. So make them in the same location as this eye. And that's it those are all my favorite painting techniques that I use for my sculptures regularly. I really hope you enjoyed this video and you found it informative. Of course let me know what you think in the comments below. If you've got more tips to add feel free let me know I'd love to hear from you. And then before we close out don't forget to check me out on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Ace of Clay and join my Facebook group Snakes of Clay and I will see you in the next video. Thanks for watching!