How to Sculpt REALISTIC DOG from DOG PET PICTURES Eps 1 Polymer Clay Tutorial by Joan Cabarrus

We're here in my art studio today and I will show you how to create a simple pet sculpture. I'm gonna show you a little bit of overview about what type of pet I'm going to sculpt today. Here's a picture of Bodhi. He was an American Staffordshire, 15 years old. Bodhi's family was really heartbroken when he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. Alright, let's do this! Preparing my supplies, cutter, pliers, aluminum wires, and aluminum foil. Having the picture of the pet on the side will help. Here's the very basic foundation of the armature. Taking small sheets of foil, bunch them up, and apply it on the wire armature. This will help your armature bulk up. Squeezing it tightly to prevent air and hollow space inside. And it's okay to apply little bits of foil as long as they're secured and tightly packed. So actually, before you start learning how to sculpt the clay, you will learn how to sculpt the foil first. Isn't that cool? So just keep adding foil until you reach the certain general shape of your pet. And when we start applying clay on the body parts and we realize that there's too much foil on the certain parts of the body or the leg, we can always adjust it by squeezing or eliminate some foil. Applying foils on all four legs. And here you can see some loose foil and you can just easily secure them with a paper tape. The goal here is to put enough foil on the armature, but then not too much because it could risk the surface of your sculpture breaking very easily. Next is shaping the neck and the head. Ta-da! Now I'm happy with it. Next is applying clay on the surface. What you're seeing here is called Sculpey Bake and Bond. It's like a glue making the clay stick to any surface that you want on the body parts. It cures and hardens after you bake it in the oven along with the sculpture. Now I'm building up on the face and the snout and the neck. Just applying more and more clay until you reach the certain look you want. If you notice, I started the armature and application of clay from the body first. Following this step will help you determine the overall shape and size of the sculpture that you want and you can be flexible when it comes to the size of the head. Here you're seeing that I'm applying more clay on the cheekbone, cheek area, on the back of the head, the neck, and the shoulders. For the eyes, I'm going to use two plastic beads for the eyeballs. I'm going to put clay around the eyeballs to encapsulate them so they won't pop out. Here you're seeing that the face and the head is building up by adding more and more clay around the eyes, the eyebrows, the cheekbone, snout, and don't forget to blend them. Now if you notice, I popped the two eyeballs out and then I popped them back in. Why do you think I did that? As you go, blend the clay. The beauty of sculpting is that you can always make mistakes and fix it. Just keep on adding more clay on the areas that needs more clay and removing some clay on the parts that needs removing. It's easy! Also, every time you blend the clay and you want to smoothen the surface out, use oil with brush. I'm just going to add more and more clay until I reach the certain style or look that I want. For shaping the neck folds or any folds on the body, especially if they're large in size, you can simply shape the clay on how you want it and then just simply add it on the surface. I'm going to use wire mesh to shape Bodhi's ears, making sure that the border of the wire mesh are folded so I don't accidentally poke myself with those sharp points. Ouch! Here, I'm going to place it in the right spot and you have the freedom to manipulate the shape of the ear if you want it erect or if you want it droopy. Applying thin layers of clay on all surface of the wire mesh. This will cover the wire mesh and it will look like the skin of the ears. Because the sculpture is simple in nature, I'm not going to sculpt the inside of the ears. This is going to be a very, very basic shape of the ear. To smoothen the inside of the ears, you can use a ball stylus. Ball stylus here, ball stylus there, ball stylus everywhere. Here I'm going to poke two holes on the nostrils. You can use a small ball stylus again or a pointed tool just like this one, the gum stimulator. Making sure that the separation of the upper lip from the lower lip are distinctive. What do you think so far? Yay! I'm going to shape the paw, scoring the separation of the individual finger of the paw, making note where the skinny parts of individual finger are located. I think we're alright with that. With a peach or beige colored Sculpey clay for the nails. Make sure to bake these nails before you apply them on the paw. What you're seeing here now is fur texturing. Ready to put the nails on the paw? Here you go! When you notice here, every time you scratch the surface of the sculpture, it leaves these little particles or little pieces of clay that makes the surface look rough and dirty. So here you're going to use oil and brush to smoothen the surface out. And we are done! I'm going to stamp my logo on the sculpture, the JFCRN. Baking time! Hey, whatever polymer clay brand you're using, always follow the package insert, okay? Alright! Our simple sculpture of Bodhi is now done baking. I actually waited overnight. That is Bodhi. He's all hard and nice. Here I'm inspecting Bodhi and make sure that there's no cracks anywhere. A lot of cracks happen on the areas that are very thick. But cracks are easily fixable and very normal. I'm going to take you back to my art studio and we are going to paint Bodhi right now. Oh, hello! I'm going to choose you! DecoArt Multipurpose Sealer and you! Honey Brown. I just love my basket! So before I paint the sculpture with acrylic paint, I'm going to cover and paint the entire sculpture with a sealer. Here I'm using the DecoArt Multipurpose Sealer. It works really great! After it dries up, then I can apply the acrylic paint. For painting realistic sculptures just like this one, you're not only painting the piece with one solid color. You're actually using several tints and shades of color. And sometimes, even if it's out of ordinary, like colored blues, colored reds, you apply them there. But just very, very thin layers. And sometimes, or most of the time, they're wash, they're paint washes. I'm going to keep quiet for a little bit, okay? With Bodhi's eyeballs, they're pretty much sunken and that's pretty the normal for him. And that's how he actually looks like. There's a lot of fat around the eyeballs. So I'm not going to worry too much about the colors of the eyeballs because it's going to be, it's going to have so much shadows that it's not going to show the color anyway. So you don't have to worry about that. Next we'll be coating the eyeballs with High Gloss Liquid Resin. Put a small drop in a cup with the resin and one drop of the hardener. Using a toothpick to mix the mixture, I'm going to use this toothpick to apply this resin directly on the eyeballs. Just a little dab, just a little dab. Here's Mr. Varnish ready to protect your paint job. Here, I'm using a DecoArt DuraClear Matte Varnish. Alright, Bodhi is done and he is ready to be shipped to his family. If you find this video very informational and you really like it and you want to learn some more, I actually wrote a book on how to create your own pet sculpture. It's called the DIY Realistic Dog Sculpture Wand. You can find it in Amazon.com or you can Google it. It's being distributed all around the world. I really hope that Bodhi's family will cherish this little piece of love that I created for them for Christmas. If you like this video and you enjoy everything that I played in this video, which I composed, hit that subscribe button so you can see more of the videos that I will create in the future. Or you can follow me in my Instagram, my Facebook page, or you can visit my website at www.jfcrn.com. See you again soon! Bye-bye!