Sculpting a rose
- Thread starter KatieG
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Amazon warrior
New member
Einion
New member
Hi Katie, roses are actually really easy to make in principle (both bud and open flowers). I\'ve done this at full size and tried it at 1/20 or so without too much trouble. At a very small scale the technique is going to be harder to pull off, but I think it\'s doable, might even only take a few attempts.
Here\'s the basic technique. If you refer to photos of roses while you\'re working (or a real rose of course!) then you can get some really realistic results.
Einion
Here\'s the basic technique. If you refer to photos of roses while you\'re working (or a real rose of course!) then you can get some really realistic results.
Einion
Wren
Member
The roses on this Lady of Darkness were my attempt at sculpting roses. That was a while back, hopefully I\'d do a better job if I tried again today, but I\'m not sure I could get it that much more in scale. I think I did it similarily to that article - flattened out a piece of GS to make a petal then wrapped it around the base. I did each flower all in one go, but if you let the GS cure after each petal you could probably go a lot smaller and have more control over the shape of the petals and stuff, but that sounds pretty tedious. ;->
The rose on the base of this Vampiress, on the other hand, is probably TOO tiny. It\'d look good in a bunch or as a rose bush, and I\'m thinking of using these same ones on another base where there will be several roses around the character\'s feet. These are HO roses from the Busch company, the pack is just called Rosen. I bought it in HobbyTown, they\'ve added a number of Busch things to our local one. I think there\'s a box of tulips, too. If they made an O version that would probably be the perfect size.
For my final version of the vampiress I made a bigger rose from dried flower parts. The flower and stem are a piece of preserved gyp perfecta flower, and the leaves were glued on from another type of dried flower. I\'ve used the birch seed pod leaves people use for leaf scatter to glue to flowers to make plants before too. The flower was originally a cream colour and painted up pretty well.
The rose on the base of this Vampiress, on the other hand, is probably TOO tiny. It\'d look good in a bunch or as a rose bush, and I\'m thinking of using these same ones on another base where there will be several roses around the character\'s feet. These are HO roses from the Busch company, the pack is just called Rosen. I bought it in HobbyTown, they\'ve added a number of Busch things to our local one. I think there\'s a box of tulips, too. If they made an O version that would probably be the perfect size.
For my final version of the vampiress I made a bigger rose from dried flower parts. The flower and stem are a piece of preserved gyp perfecta flower, and the leaves were glued on from another type of dried flower. I\'ve used the birch seed pod leaves people use for leaf scatter to glue to flowers to make plants before too. The flower was originally a cream colour and painted up pretty well.
Thanks for all the thoughts. I\'m not sure what exactly I will do, but I may start by trying to sculpt it myself and see if I get anything useful enough... if not I may have to see what I can find premade.
I don\'t mind doing it piece by piece, it\'s not for a project that has any particular timescale, just something I want to fiddle with
I don\'t mind doing it piece by piece, it\'s not for a project that has any particular timescale, just something I want to fiddle with
Herb the bitter
New member
The roses for this guy were made by just rolling up thin strips of green stuff(let it cure a bit so it\'s not so sticky) and then flaring out the edges a bit. The thinner you can roll the material your working with, the better the flower will look. To me it\'s better to keep the flowers in scale and lose some detail than to have giant flowers, but that\'s personal preference. I think I could do better now, but I was going for quantity over quality at the time. I think link Einion pointed out would work, but I think I\'d let the GS cure between each layer.
http://www.coolminiornot.com/115428
(Looking back at the paint job makes me cringe a bit.)
http://www.coolminiornot.com/115428
(Looking back at the paint job makes me cringe a bit.)
rocketandroll
New member
That\'s wierd... I was trying to work this out last week!
Here\'s what I ended up with after an afternoon of experimenting:
These are correct to scale for large open roses at 28mm scale, ie: about 3 - 4mm diameter.
Having tried sculpting them from a blob of solid greenstuff, which was a nightmare, I eventually settled on this technique:
I first found a piece of stiff wire which would become the stalk of the rose... I cut it far longer than I needed the finished article, at least an inch long.
I then rolled out a really thin sheet of greenstuff, like 0.5mm or less thick. I then cut that into narrow strips, about 2mm to 3mm wide... and then cut those strips to about 15 - 20mm long.
I tacked the end of the strip onto the end of the wire, as if it were a pennant flying from the end of the wire... I used cyanoacrolate to hold it in place (a tiny bit).
I then gently wound the strip around the end of the wire, spiralling downwards slightly so that the lower edge of it was about 1/2 a mm below the end of the wire.
Finally, I blended the end of the strip into the layer below, and then rounded off the underneath where it joins the wire beneath the flower.... Then I teased out the petals to a point, spiralling in towards the center, and in between each of the petals, pushed little indentations in to give seperation to the petals... all this sculpting was done with the tip of a fine scalpel blade.
After they were set I then finished off the flowers by adding tiny paper leaves to the stalks, and made some teensy little thorns and tacked those in place with very thin Cyano.
I\'m pretty happy with how they came out, certainly from a few inches away I think they look like roses... and I haven\'t tried painting them yet.
Obviously they don\'t have to be growing out of a skulls mouth, but it helps
I was going to write a little tutorial on this with pics, but haven\'t got round to it yet :-(
Ben
Here\'s what I ended up with after an afternoon of experimenting:
These are correct to scale for large open roses at 28mm scale, ie: about 3 - 4mm diameter.
Having tried sculpting them from a blob of solid greenstuff, which was a nightmare, I eventually settled on this technique:
I first found a piece of stiff wire which would become the stalk of the rose... I cut it far longer than I needed the finished article, at least an inch long.
I then rolled out a really thin sheet of greenstuff, like 0.5mm or less thick. I then cut that into narrow strips, about 2mm to 3mm wide... and then cut those strips to about 15 - 20mm long.
I tacked the end of the strip onto the end of the wire, as if it were a pennant flying from the end of the wire... I used cyanoacrolate to hold it in place (a tiny bit).
I then gently wound the strip around the end of the wire, spiralling downwards slightly so that the lower edge of it was about 1/2 a mm below the end of the wire.
Finally, I blended the end of the strip into the layer below, and then rounded off the underneath where it joins the wire beneath the flower.... Then I teased out the petals to a point, spiralling in towards the center, and in between each of the petals, pushed little indentations in to give seperation to the petals... all this sculpting was done with the tip of a fine scalpel blade.
After they were set I then finished off the flowers by adding tiny paper leaves to the stalks, and made some teensy little thorns and tacked those in place with very thin Cyano.
I\'m pretty happy with how they came out, certainly from a few inches away I think they look like roses... and I haven\'t tried painting them yet.
Obviously they don\'t have to be growing out of a skulls mouth, but it helps
I was going to write a little tutorial on this with pics, but haven\'t got round to it yet :-(
Ben
Ben\'s description is almost the same way I\'ve done a few myself, with one exception, I cut the green stuff into Triangular strips to wind around the stalk.
It helps to make the body of the rose without making it too Fat.
It helps to make the body of the rose without making it too Fat.
generulpoleaxe
New member
for things like that i wait until summer and glycerine real small flowers
aint nature great.
aint nature great.
QuietiManes
New member
Yeah, seriously, I saved rocket\'s post in a word file strait away. Tres cool.
