Sunday

I only had about five hours to work on Sunday before heading out for D&D, so I got to work as soon as I woke up in the hopes of being able to show a “not actually finished, but looks finished enough” photo on Facebook to all of the people who had been cheering me on since Thursday morning.

I quickly baked the hammer while I brushed my teeth and boiled the tea kettle. I couldn’t bake this the night before because uncured putty expands and bubbles when baked; you need to give it a few hours to cure first, or else the expanding Green Stuff will crack the clay from the inside out.

Once it was baked, I cooled it by dunking it in lukewarm and then cold water, then dried it off and Green Stuffed it to the model. The two hand wires weren’t quite enough to hold it in place, so I ran a supporting wire up from the base to press it upward into her lower hand by means of the excess brass rod I had left hanging out.

I applied clay around the haft to create her hands. These are probably the weakest part of the final model– I didn’t spend quite enough time working her fingers into a strong, tight gripping pose, which makes the hammer “read” as being far lighter than I intended. :/

I love drawing fingerless gloves on my models (though I kind of hate wearing them myself in real life). Like all other cloth edges, these were created by running a thin clay snake across her fingers and then pressing it into the hand on one side.

…like so. Another putty snake was added on the forearm where the glove ends a few inches short of her elbow.

I wanted to have fur coming out the back of her glove (to match the boots), so I pressed the edge into two overlapping layers to give me material to form into more fur chunks.

And then I made fur chunks.

These were cleaned up later. For now they looked kinda gross. :/

I then added metal plates, in shapes that mimicked the ones on the boots. I strongly debated giving her lobstered gauntlets in another imitated hoof shape, but decided I liked the exposed fingers better.

And with that mad dash complete, I was pretty much done for the weekend. I had quite a bit of work left to do (as you can tell from the scrollbar on the right side of your screen), but I had plenty enough to show online. 🙂

Later That Week

The rest of the model was completed on weeknights over the remainder of the week.

The first thing to do was to add sorely-missing detail to the metal plates in the form of rivets. To create these, I rolled out an incredibly thin clay snake, then cut it into super-tiny chunks. These chunks turned out to be way too big, so I cut even those pieces in half with a knife.

Rivets are… kind of small and fiddly, as it turns out. >_<

Rivets were applied methodically– lift with clayshaper, apply to places where a leather strap would be located underneath (whether to hold two plates together, or to hang a set of plates on the rest of the body), blend flush with plate surface with same clayshaper.

The model required quite a lot of them, so… it took a while. :/

Rivets: Side View!

With the figure’s detailing approaching completion, I started working out how to attach the last major remaining component– the fur loincloth. This would require a strong wire armature to build over, and I wasn’t entirely sure where to attach it. I had been planning to run a new wire up from the base, but eventually realized that it would be easier to completely sink a hoop into the clay around the crotch area; once I baked the model, this would be pretty solid, allowing me to build the loincloth over the top of it.

I smushed the wire into the existing clay, then did my best to cover it over, including stringing some very thin clay strips across the center of it for additional front-to-back support later on.

After two entire days of nothing but cleanup and nit picking, I eventually made my peace with the (admittedly quite satisfactory) state of the model and threw it in the oven.

This is consistently the most painful and scary part of any sculpting project– the point of no return.

🙁

(FUN FACT: When lowering her into my oven, my hand slipped and TORE OFF HER SCALP. After my heart started bearing again, I lowered it back down and re-smoothed it into the head. Not exactly a confidence booster when you’re already questioning your work…)

Once the base layer was baked, I built up the last piece using the support structure I had put in place.

I created the detail to give the impression that the loincloth was simply looped over the top of her belt. The lower section would be the inner leather side, while the top section would be covered in the thick fur that was present all over the rest of her outfit.

Some more fur chunks, and a few additional metal plates, and the Knight of Rams was essentially finished.

All that remained was to cobble together something for her to stand on… and how much work could that be, really?