Making Jake part 2

7. Here I’ve added more Sculpey and am starting to smooth it down. I paint a little turpentine substitute onto the surface of the baked Sculpey to help the new stuff stick as it's not easy getting Sculpey to stick to smooth surfaces, scratching in some grooves helps too if you can get away with it and it wont ruin the sculpt.. When I get it as smooth as possible it'll go back into the oven, once baked and cooled I'll then sand it down until its really smooth.

8. I've just quickly scribbled his face onto the surface to give me an idea of where ill be adding the features. I'm poking some smaller bits of wire into the baked Sculpey to help the new stuff stick in place.

9. More wire and less rubbish pencil sketching.

10. So now I’ve added his features with the Super Sculpey firm and bulked out the base (which is supposed to be his belly all stretched out) and baked it again. Next I drilled some holes where his arms and legs are going to be.......legs and legs.... does Jake have arms and legs or just legs?...... he's a dog...but........

11. I was going to make his arms ….and legs... from Sculpey with a thin wire armature by just rolling up lengths and coiling it around but I changed my mind as I didn’t think it would be strong enough.

12. So here's what I did instead. I took more of that really strong wire and bent it into coils then glued in in place with Araldite, which for those that don’t know is a very strong two part epoxy glue. I had to prop the wire up with some lumps of plasticine while it set as it takes a few hours.

This is the end of my progress pics as I forgot to take any more.
After this I made his hands/feet......paws.. from Milliput which is a two part epoxy putty. I used this as it was too hard trying to get the Sculpey to stick to the wire without mesh (I didn’t want to use mesh as it would bulk up the end of his wrists.....ankles.....whatever they are!) Milliput sticks to the metal just fine once set.

Once it had set I sanded down any rough areas of Sculpey/glue/Milliput, gave it a wipe with Acetone to remove any grease or dust (you can just wash it with soapy water or use rubbing alcohol) then coated it with a spray primer.

Next comes the painting, I did the base colour with my airbrush then painted his eyes and mouth by hand.

It wasn’t quite stable enough at this point so I glued him onto a plywood disk to give a bit of extra stability.

Varnished with a matt varnish, I run this through an old airbrush as painting it on can sometimes cause the paint to run and streak a little, I sometimes use a spray varnish from an aerosol can too. If anyone is using spray of any kind you absolutely must wear a respirator mask, you really don't want lungs coated in paint or varnish.

Here's the finished pen pot : [link]

And that's it, hope it's been interesting or useful in some way. Thanks for looking.
Amy.

Part one: [link]