Sculpting tips: Upgrading equipment

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Lamb, and picked up a great bunch of tips on sculpting from her.

Victoria has ground down her wax 5 and has some seriously tiny tipped tools for doing details she picked up from gencon.

If you make miniatures, you make tools. Nothing you can buy in art stores comes remotely close to what you need to get seriously into making minis!

I decided to upgrade my tools and workspace to get really serious.
First up, my mini oven.
I had been using a big coffee can with a lamp, but it's fiddly dropping the models in from the top and replacing the lamp. It had to be upgraded.

Today I cut a door, fitted cork heat protection inside and underneath, and cut a heavy tin foil lid to wrap around the lamp. The door was trimmed and hinged with gaff tape (the old theatre credo of "if you can't fix it with gaff- it cant be fixed." came to mind) and I taped on a strip of magnetic material to act as a clasp to hold the door shut. The mini oven is now directly to the left of my sculpting board, and so it takes a moment to pop a figure in to harden. This minor change to my workflow really sped up my session- encouraging me to bake small sections more often- saving smudges and encouraging layering up of details.

Next up was tiny tools. I will post up a pic when I have a chance of the nibs so you can make your own.
I mounted thick paperclips into the tops of old biros using 5 minute epoxy putty. Then I carefully bent and filed down the tips using diamond files. The final pass was with fine wet and dry paper. To make things easier to grab at a glance I trickled bright paint into the hollow of the biro to color code each tip.
The final results make a massive difference! I am stunned at how much better my results are.
The two main tips I made are the mantis (looks like a praying mantis claw- or scythe) and a tiny flat thumb used for poking in arches like fingernails and gums. I feel like I need a little spatula too, so that's on the cards next.

Finally I opened up my sculpting space by building a wooden shelf that holds my current work load and reference figures up off the workspace- and underneath I have all my epoxy putty in easy reach. Much better, and far less claustrophobic and cluttered. I feel more relaxed as I work now.

Another handy tool is my plasticard sheet on a cork handle- I can hold it next to my figure and prepare small details on it before transferring to the model. wish I thought of it months ago.

The right tools and workspace makes a huge difference. I blasted through the my sculpting session tonight!

More figures soon!