Sculpting Hair

[moon_knight1971]

I'm thinking of customizing some resin busts but haven't the slightest idea of how to sculpt hair. Any good tutorial or tips out there?:)

[EvilNinjaChris]

i would say it all depends on what kind of hair you'd like...I haven't seen too many tutorials if any on sculpting hair. here's what I do

for large flowing women's hair: add larger lumps of clay rolled into the shape of a cigar add most of the mass with that...basically those will be the rough outline...its tough to explain with just typing but if you look at a particular hairstyle you will notice that all the strands rest in masses. the rough lumps will be your masses. then what you wanna do is take a fine needle tool and go to town pretty much just do long flowing line after line and try not to cross over into each line as much as possible..it takes patience don't try and rush.

for shorter hair just shape the clay/epoxy putty into the rough shape of the hair you want and do the same thing with the needle tool.

then smooth with your choice of solvent...sometimes i find this isn't always necessary. especially if you were doing some type of animal hair where you would want it kind of fuzzy/sharp looking

hope that gets you off on the right foot. good luck

[Raas Kaaz]

thanks man ! I think this will help my for my second sculp ! :)

[Mangus]

Chris is dead on with this. Another thing you can do to help avoid messy clay crumbs, is lay some seran wrap over the area. This will help keep your lines smooth and free of excess clay/crumbs.

[EvilNinjaChris]

Chris is dead on with this. Another thing you can do to help avoid messy clay crumbs, is lay some seran wrap over the area. This will help keep your lines smooth and free of excess clay/crumbs.

oh yeah I forgot about that last tip.. you can expirement with layers of saran wrap or even the thicker plastic wrap from stores when you buy something. glad I could help.

One of the main things that helped me to do hair was to just studying other pieces that have a good mane on them. I am fortubnate enough to have a few collectible stores around that stock busts and statues. I usually go in and poke around. when you see things in person you have a much better understanding of how things are done. sometimes i have even seen tool marks that i just recognize and that helps a ton...when I think I can really use something good for reference, I buy it.

one more thing I forgot about is when scratch sculpting...not just adding to busts/FS, it definately helps so much if you bake the piece before adding hair. because then you have a hard surface to press against and you can draw it out real fine onto the shoulders/chest/back and make it look more natural:thumbs2:

[moon_knight1971]

Thx ENC & Magnus! That's something to start with. I guess starting simply with observation on nice pieces and going from there is the way to go. Thanks!