How to sculpt a clay dinosaur?

[Manatee]

I understand other topics like this have been made, but I have a specific question.
Let me start by saying I am totally in love with the short-necked sauropod Brachytrachelopan mesai. I have been wondering how I would go about sculpting a figure of this weird and wonderful species using clay.

[tyrantqueen]

The simplest way is to find a skeletal from google and build a wire armature from it to get the correct proportions. You can then bulk it out using aluminium foil and then put the clay "skin" over that. I found lots of good sculpting tutorials on DeviantART. You could go with epoxy putty as your clay medium, which is very strong and dries without firing. Or you could try polymer clay, which needs to be baked in an oven.

Here is the skeletal of the particular species you were requesting:



Some stuff to get you started:

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sculpting-tut-part-2-1-of-2-reupload-308334102
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Yaderson-Sculpture-Tutorial-302257709
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sculpting-Process-288681333
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Making-figurine-hairs-animal-fur-tutorial-part-2-436539674
http://sculptor101.deviantart.com/art/Making-dragon-dinosaur-creature-monster-or-420530687

There's a ton of other stuff out there, Google is your friend And of course, experiment on your own.

[Manatee]

Thank you very much for the tips.

[DinoLord]

I dabbled with this a few years ago. Something I wish I had paid more attention to was the armature. It's definitely better to have an undersized armature than an oversized one.

[Paleogene Pals]

Usually, after printing out the skeletal file, I scale the image to the scale I'm working in. I measure the image that I printed out and figure out how much I need to enlarge or reduce to match the size of the figure I'm making. I then go to my library's photocopier to make the scaled copy of the skeletal image. You could probably do this digitally, but I like putting an actual ruler to an actual image to make sure everything is right. 

For the really big figures, I have been toying with the idea of getting an old projector and making transparencies of the skeleton. Then, I could project an image of the skeleton onto one of my walls and adjust the projector to get the size I want. 

Also cover your armature with aluminum foil to get a rough build up. This saves on costs for Super Sculpey or Magic Sculpt (my preferred mediums). I like to mix 1/2 Super Sculpey with 1/2 Elephant Gray Sculpey III to make my clay.

[Dinomike]

Make sure you make the armature strong enough to withstand the weight of the clay. Nothing's more annoying than your sculpture starting to lean on one side or fall over! I often use metal wire to make my models. And it's also important to make the armatrure considerably smaller than what the finished sculpture would be as the added clay will quickly make it over-sized. I have noticed that the better your armature the easier the sculpting process