Sunday, April 1, 2012

Let's begin

The first step involved scanning the art and then reducing it to the actual size of the finished piece. I took a piece of acetate and traced (yes, I cheated) the painting. The acetate "tracing" was taped to a piece of white paper and traced again sing a piece of waxed paper. A fine point Sharpie worked fine for drawing on the waxy surface.

The tracing.

A mixture of Sculpey Firm and Sculpey III was mixed together and rolled into a ball. It was then placed on a piece of black floor tile and flattened by pressing down on it with another tile. The wax paper tracing was pressed down over this once the Sculpey was flattened to where the design fit. I then poked through the drawing with a pointed tool. The purpose of this is so an outline of the drawing is left so the forms can be sculpted.




After I finished poking through the entire drawing I slowly peeled the wax paper off. To my surprise the drawing transferred to the Sculpey in addition to the holes from the tool. I thought maybe the tool carried some of the ink though, I'm not really sure.


Ready for sculpting!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Gary thank-you! This post has inspired me as I want to sculpt and produce some 54mm Colonial flats to wargame with. A Gent on the British Flat Figure Society has a similiar method which he described to me less some pictures. Now that I see it, I get it! Well done ... Jeff

Gary Dombrowski said...

Jeff, Thanks for the kind words.I'm happy to see you've been inspired. This piece is a lot thicker than a flat. It is possible to do them thinnner though. The downside to this piece is that it's only sculpted on one side.~Gary

Unknown said...

Ya Thanks Gary! It's your technique of how to do which is very helpful ... Jeff

obscure creations said...

I hate when artist say they 'cheated' by transferring drawings, using a template or what have you...

Give this raw piece of clay with your transfer on it to an average person and you'll get it back as a lump of silly putty...
Talent is talent whichever particular part of the art you are focusing on. (the only time this is not true is when you are in a life drawing class lol!)
Nice work

From Tyla @ http://obscurecreationsbytyla.blogspot.ca/