Having problems smoothing sculpts .. any advice, how to's?

S

StarFyre

Active member
Hello,

I've been using water and a paintbrush or turpenoid and a paint brush to brush over super sculpey sculpts. For apoxysculpt, I use water and finger and then paintbrush/water.

What I find is the sculpt itself has a very rough finish even though parts of it look fine on the sculpt.

Some areas I can fix by sanding it with a rough paper and then a super fine sand paper but areas around, let's say a nose, or lips where it's harder to do that.

What do people do to make their sculpts/mods/conversions look as smooth as the original model?

PS: I'm tempted to buy some of the miniature mentor sculpting tutorials :)

Regards,

Sanjay
 
Einion

Einion

New member
SuperSculpey isn't the smoothest of materials, it has a very slight granularity which is quite apparent when you compare it directly to a resin kit piece for example. But Apoxie Sculpt should be really smooth, it should definitely not have any kind of rough surface unless you form it deliberately - in practice it should be easy to get it smoother than the surface of most typical metal castings.

Overall, with epoxy putties in particular, I recommend not relying too much on liquids and brushing to get a smooth surface. It is practically an essential with polymer clays (unless you intend to do this post-hardening) but you can get by without doing it at all with most any epoxy putty, with the general exception of GS.

Einion
 
shanerozzell

shanerozzell

Member
You need to get some of the Sculpy Clay softener. Once I am happy with the area I am sculpting I paint a little of the softner on, give a few mins to soak in a bit then with a soft brush, wipe over the areas I want to smooth. With a slightly harder brush I can even shape the surface and add detail. especially good around the face and eyes.
 
S

Sunshine

New member
I stopped using Super Sculpey years ago in favor of using Apoxie Sculpt. I didn't like having to bake it to have it cure and didn't care for the fumes that it gave off when baking. I used Apoxie Sculpt and Fixit Sculpt for 10 years, but also had trouble feathering it out with a paintbrush. I'm using Amazing Sculpt now with Denatured Alcohol. It doesn't have sand as an ingredient like the Apoxie Sculpt, so it gets glass smooth and feathers down to nothing. I found that it is much better for customizing plastic models than either the Super Sculpley or Apoxie Sculpt.

Also, keep in mind when using synthetic clays, don't use water to smooth them out. Use Denatured Alcohol or solvent based smoothing solutions. This will insure that your synthetic clay will not delaminate from whatever you are applying it to.


StarFyre said:
Hello,

I've been using water and a paintbrush or turpenoid and a paint brush to brush over super sculpey sculpts. For apoxysculpt, I use water and finger and then paintbrush/water.

What I find is the sculpt itself has a very rough finish even though parts of it look fine on the sculpt.

Regards,

Sanjay
Click to expand...
 
S

StarFyre

Active member
I use super sculpey since time is an issue. The few times I'm able to sit down and try to work on a sculpt for myself, I can't work for several hours straight due to other stuff. Super sculpey, since it requires baking, means I can work; come back to it later, etc.

I use apoxysculpt for modifying stuff (ie. plastic, metal or resin models) since I don't want to put an existing model in the oven :D

Regards,

Sanjay
 
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