Making a Sculpey Head...Quick!

5-minute project, "Oxen Guy"

     Hopefully you have ended up here after checking out my post "Working with Sculpey", but in case you haven't here's a list of things you need to get started: 

1. Super Sculpey 

2. Some kind of tool, even a pencil will do.

3. A ball of aluminum foil

4. An oven, hair dryer, or boiling water

5. Acrylic paints (optional)

        Although you'll notice I have a rod of square brass stock and a block of wood, this really isn't necessary if you are just doing a study, testing techniques, or just messing around. I always have a piece of Sculpey around that I can just mash-up to get ideas out. However, if you plan keeping it around for awhile, maybe because it rocks, you will want to at least have a ball of aluminum foil and an oven, hair dryer, or boiling pot of water. This allows you to a) not waste too much Sculpey, and b) have a way to harden it.

       Make the aluminum ball pretty tight and then you can start laying on thin layers of Sculpey. If you build it up to quick and don't work to squish it into all of the cracks and crevices of the aluminum foil, the Sculpey has a tendency to just fall off. This is terrible when you start trying to do detail work.

       Figure out where you want the brow line, lips, ears, and anything else that's going to stand off of your original mound of clay. It's much easier to have the material there when you start then trying to graft it in later; it's stronger that way too.

     Using your pencil or other tool, start making your indents for a mouth, eye sockets, lips, and ear holes. Now you can just use fingers or whatever you need to achieve the look you want. 

     And that's about it. When your done with all of the major work you can choose to add texture with something like a toothbrush, or just go straight to baking. If you bake, keep the oven at 240 F for about 15-20 minutes. It won't look all too baked when it comes out, but if you try to stick back in there, the end result is a weird fractured look and burn marks, so play it safe. Using a hair dryer you just want to get good movement around the entire piece, and make sure you don't stay in one spot too long as you can burn the Sculpey. Last technique is boiling water: gently set your piece in the water and let it stay there for about 30 seconds. If you take your piece out and it easily indents, give it another dose of 30 seconds to teach it a lesson. 

       When this step is done and the Sculpey has cooled, you can paint the piece using acrylic paints. I usually  use a dry brush technique as it is the best way to complement the natural skin tone of the Sculpey. Just put the paint on, then wipe it off with a clean dry rag. The paint stays in the cracks and divots from your detail work, and wipes off from the surface which looks great.

Dry Brush technique, Sculpey head

       Please feel free to let me know if this was helpful, or if you need any further questions answered.