For this sculpture I am attempting to create a human version of Mr. Burns, the Simpsons character. I am going be sculpting lots of details and wrinkles into his face, whilst still keeping the distinctive Mr. Burns features so that he is recognizable. I will share with you my process and the materials I chose to use, but I will also give cheaper alternatives to some of the materials. I hope you enjoy this tutorial, if you do make your own I would love to see it in the comments below! :)

Supplies

For this sculpture you will need:

-A wooden armature

-Newspaper

-Tape

-Air dry clay

-Glass eyes / marbles

-Plastic / acrylic teeth

-Water

-Sculpting tools

Step 1: Armature & Reference

Before starting a sculpture, I always print off plenty of reference images relating to the piece I am going to be creating. In this case I have collected images of Mr. Burns and also images of old skin & wrinkles, these will be extremely useful once I start making my character, to refer back to.

The reason reference images are so vital when sculpting is because our brains on their own won't store all of the details needed to create or recreate a piece of art. When we attempt to remember things we have seen in the past, we are extracting the inaccurate, patchy perception we have of them. This is because our brains simply filter out any irrelevant information to keep space for new information, therefore, generally the small details will go a miss!

Once all of you reference images are printed and pinned up in sight of where you will be working, you need to make an armature. An armature is essentially the skeleton of your sculpture. Depending on what you are making, these can vary quite a lot in shape and size. For this Sculpture I will be using a wooden base with a longer, thin piece of wood nailed to the center, as you can see from the images depicted I have wrapped newspaper around the top of the wooden spike & secured this with tape (any tape will do) this will keep your sculpture light and save you pennies on extra, unnecessary clay!

Step 2: Roughing Out

The very first stage of adding clay to your armature is to rough out the basic shapes. The clay I am using here is an air dry clay or pottery clay, this clay is great to work with when making larger sculptures because its quick and does not need heating like oil based clay does. The cons of air dry clay is that it dries out and sometimes cracks when left out uncovered, so if you're planning on leaving your sculpture to sit for a few weeks, this isn't the clay for you.

I start by applying large rolled out pieces of clay to the newspaper to create a rough head shape, once I am happy with the size and shape, I press my fingers into the middle of the face to create eye sockets, these will hold my characters eyes. For this sculpture I have purchased glass eyes to add to the realism of the piece, but a cheaper alternative for eyes is to use marbles, these are also great to use as they extremely smooth & have a slight sheen to them, which if/when moulding the piece will translate really nicely to the mould. With the eyes in place you can easily work around them to build up areas of the face, such as the brow bone and nose.

Step 3: Adding Features

This step of the process is where your character can really start coming to life, I tend to spend a bit of time building up and changing things on the face to get it as accurate as possible. A good tip when creating a sculpture is to introduce a pair of fresh eyes when you are a little stuck to bring in a fresh perspective, sometimes other people can pick out things that you ay have missed.

I started by building up the brow bone & adding in some deep lines, I wanted to create some deep wrinkles to show his age (he is 104 after all!). I also brought some more clay to the eye area, this gives the appearance of tired puffy eyes & also really accentuates the hollow lines beneath.

for the ears I rolled out two identical balls of clay & flattened them down to a kidney shape, I blended these into the sculpture with my fingers on one side so that they were flush with the clay, the other side I left extruded

Step 4: Textures

This is the final stage of the process, adding texture to your sculpture is the difference between a flat, lifeless character and a realistic life like piece of art. Texture adds depth an dimension to a sculpture & in my opinion is the most important stage of the process!

Before I started on the texturing, I added in the teeth. These teeth are false acrylic ones I purchased online, if you don't want to buy teeth you can sculpt these in with the clay, I always like to use fake teeth because I think it adds another layer of realism to the character and teeth can be very fiddly to sculpt.

I have a few tools I use for skin textures, the first is my pore tool (the gold one pictured above). I use this tool to create pore indents in the skin, on its own this can create quite harsh dents so a great way to use this is to place some plastic wrap on to the clay and press the tool onto it, this softens the texture the tool creates and produces a much more life like texture.

For the wrinkles I like to use two different tools, one is a rake tool, which is essentially a tool with many flexible spikes, this tool replicates very fine surface wrinkles. to add the slightly deeper wrinkles I use a tool with a pointed end & simply carve out the lines.

if you feel that some of your textures are too hash you can soften the whole face with water as this is a water based clay. if you are sculpting with an oil based clay its best to soften with either lighter fluid or white spirit. all you need to do is take a soft, damp paint brush and lightly brush it over the area of clay you wish to smooth.

Thank you for reading & I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! :)