Polymer clay

[sauroid]

is polymer clay (like Sculpey) a good medium for making animal figures? is it durable once cured? can you name paleo/wildlife artists who use mainly polymer clay?

[tyrantqueen]

I think polymer clay is an excellent medium to sculpt with. Properties will vary according to which brand of clay you choose. Some are very soft (for example original Sculpey) and some are very hard (Sculpey Firm, and Fimo classic) and there are some in between the two extremes.

However, polymer clay is quite brittle. If you drop the cured clay from a height, it will break. If you're careful with the finished sculpture, you shouldn't have any problems.

Forest Rogers sculpts with Kato Polyclay. There are others but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

Not a professional, but Super Sculpey is just about the only thing I use. It is best when mixed with super sculpey firm for legs and similar structures.

[Paleogene Pals]

I sculpt using a 1/2 mix of Super Sculpey and Elephant Gray Sculpey III. Magic Sculpt is used when necessary.

[Takama]

I Use Sculpy III to make my often crude and embarrassing creations.  I like it because its the cheapest I can buy.


I made a Diplodocus out of the Material, but I was not happy with it so I Gave it as a gift to my Aunt.

[Gorgonzola]

Wanted to chime in on this regarding cure times for sculpey - their suggested times are bunk, pure bunk. It doesn't bake high enough or long enough to break apart and fuse the plastic polymers together to create a full cure. Basically, if you're using super sculpey and your finished sculpt is still the same pinkish color, it hasn't baked enough.  The final piece should have a dark caramel color to it.

Back when I used sculpey for maquette building, this was my bake strategy:

1) I start at 225 and leave the sculpt for an hour.

2) I raise the temp to 250 for another hour.

3) I raise the temp again to 275 for 2- 3 hours or until the Super Sculpey has turned a dark caramel or even as dark as a redish brown brick color.

4) I shut off the oven and leave the sculpt to completely cool down before removing the sculpture.

5) If you are baking a rather thick sculpture use the same method above but raise the temperature slower and in smaller increments.

It's imperative you leave the sculpture in the oven to cool down.  Taking it out early leads to the majority of cracking, because the shock of colder air against the still very warm sculpey is the root cause of it. Also imperative you don't burn it or overbake it, so you really need to keep an eye on it. You may notice when you first shut off the oven the sculpey doesn't look that dark.  As it cools the color deepens and becomes a rich dark caramel.

The benefit of fully curing it like this is that the sculpey becomes MUCH stronger than one would expect.  Like...I've thrown some thicker pieces down on the ground to stress test and have come away with no damage at all. Of course it's not as rough and tumble as some other materials, but it's certainly much more durable than sculpey that's baked according to the package.

[tyrantqueen]

Gorgonzola, I've read that technique for baking Sculpey somewhere else on the 'net, and I use it too.

Btw, this site has lots of useful tips for working with polymer: http://www.glassattic.com/

[sauroid]

very informative inputs everyone. hope to see figures made of polymer clay in this thread.

[Newt]

If you haven't yet, check out the book Pop Sculpture.  The authors focus on sculpting in wax and then casting in resin, but they include sidebars from other sculptors who use Sculpey, Castilene, epoxy, etc.  It will help give you an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of various materials, as well as covering techniques useful to sculptors working in any medium and genre, like successfully planning your sculpture and how to build armatures.