Thank you @Oxymandias, I’m flattered! Exactly, I will be starting them next along with a set of arms such that I can cast and assemble a few test models. Need to figure out a more economical alternative to buying a lot of pin vises for this purpose, though.
Thank you @Admiral & @tjub, yeah I have been painting a bit more recently, so they hopefully don’t have to stay in their sad primed state for much longer.
Beautiful hat! And such finely detailed ornaments, especially the feathers - amazing!
Do you use Procreate and Greenstuff for different kinds of sculpting techniques, or just to get some visual contrast while working? I’ve read that they have different properties, but I haven’t compared them sufficiently to notice it much
I do like Procreate a lot, especially since I only need water to wet my sculpting tools and it’s a lot easier to create flat surfaces. Due to its relative stiffness, it’s also great for adding small details and it also works nice for cloth. However, I find it sometimes a bit hard to use since the putty does not really want to adhere to itself when you mix in your hands. So there is a good chance of it flaking apart when I add small details on a previously hardened surface. Green stuff is more forgiving in that respect. Since I have to use vaseline here, I usually reserve it for the last details. Interestingly, I have the impression that, when dried, Procreate adheres better than green stuff.
Not much to report here: I did start with an axe-wielding arm, though. I have not attempted hands so far, so a bit of analysis paralysis on that front as I was worried that the wire might make sculpting fingers more difficult. I ended up drilling a tiny hole through the rod (with another piece of wire as none of my drill bits were small enough), that might do the job.
Otherwise, I am having fun with hobgoblins right now. I wish I could post more but that has to wait until the GH competition is over.
Gracias! Really love your rendering of this axe on your Dendra panoply sculpt. To bad it did not survive! In fact, it got me thinking of using a few Minoan influences on my future sculpts as well. I mean these guys worshipped bulls like our evil stunties, what could be more appropriate?
Absolutely! I’d like to see what you’d do with some Aegean Bronze Age influence. It’s an awesome and unique aesthetic that sees far too little use in fantasy (let me just drop this link to my topic-appropriate Vanguard warband ). I’ll definitely revisit the Greek bronze age dwarf idea in future sculpts.
No updates in a while. After the the last GH, I took a small break from sculpting, only to catch Covid last November. Nothing serious but that left me a bit too tired for a while for a demanding hobby after a day of work. Started doing some sculpting and painting last week again and it feels great
I used 7th ed dwarf warrior arms as reference. In hindsight, this was a mistake since the arm turned out to be way too oversized for my chorfs. Genius me did the side-by-side comparison only after being done, not sure if it can be salvaged for the original purpose. Anyway, a useful lesson in anatomy for me. Back to the drawing board!
Other than this, a few more less successful attempts at sculpting hats. I find it surprisingly hard to get the basic shape right of anything that is not cylinder-like, any advice from the pros?
@Dedled Thanks, your recent sculpts have been hugely inspirational here! I saw that you have sculpted individual nails which looks so much better than the ‘sausage fingers’ you have on some of the official GW minis.
Great work on that arm! Very natural muscles and fingers, I’m sure this is one of the best sculpts of a hand gripping a weapon I’ve seen. I have no idea how you genius anatomy sculptors pull off stuff like this!
@Antenor I’ve used an anatomy book as reference here. Bought it for this exact reason some years ago (An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists by Fritz Schider in case you are interested – it has some really good illustrations; nowhere perfect but for the price (~12.60 Euros here on the German Amazon right now) pretty hard to beat.
@Bessron It really comes down to the tools. I do 90% of my work with a small silicon brush and only use metal tools for details. With metal tools you need to make sure that they are sufficiently lubricated (usually vaseline or water). You can create the illusion of complexity by using small repetitive patterns, some of them are surprisingly easy to pull off. A good example is the chaos dwarf beard, I really love doing those.