Polymer clay sculpts

Polymer clay is a form of clay that dries only when backed in the oven for 30 minutes.

There are several brands of clay that you can purchase and due to their high price in most of the cases is used to create little items.

In this project I got fascinated by a small figure owned by a friend of mine.

This unique hand-painted figurine, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s fascinating painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony, has been individually crafted by experienced and highly skilled craftsmen.

source: https://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/bosch-fish-with-tower-figurine/p_1004658

The pictures of the original model can be seen in the following gallery

In my case I wanted to create a large sculpt (approximately 20 cm) so in order to save money, I first created a skeletal structure for the sculpt using a metal wire that was then covered with aluminum foil.

Then I used only white clay for sculpting. When finished I baked the item for a couple of hours in order for it to harden.

The next step was to prime the baked clay with oil colour primer that can be applied to any surface including canvas, wood, metal, plastic, etc.

After waiting for a couple of days for the primer to dry (and this is probably the only disadvantage of this primer) I painted the sculpt using standard oil paints.

Finally I cut a piece of wood, hand painted it in oils and waited again to dry. Finally I glued the sculpt to the wooden base

The resulting sculpt is presented in the following gallery.