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Lesson Four:  Sculpting Hands and Feet

First I start by showing you how to create a foil and tape armature.

Make a roll of regular aluminum foil, formed into some semblance of a limb. 

wrap it up well with masking tape.  this keeps the foil from discoloring your clay as you work and also helps stick the clay to the form better.

next, cover the entire piece with about 1/4 inch thickness of clay.  In this case the arm will be about 3/4 length.

here's the basic arm with the elbow crease mapped out and the flange roughed in at the top.

next take a small square of clay the thickness of a baby's palm

open a slit at one end

and fit that around the wrist area.

roll out some finger sized rolls and cut them into sections

here's a neat homemade nail tool, a fat straw cut off at an angle.  when you roll it across the clay side to side, it indents a nice rough nailbed shape.

time to start on the other side.

still needs some final smoothing, but nearly done.

working on the rest of the arm now

with just a bit more finessing, this arm will be ready to bake
Now, on to the Feet...

feet are done the same way as hands, with a roll of foil about half the thickness that the finished limb will be, and small rolls of clay to cut for toes
You'll finesse and smooth the foot just like the hand, adding a few wrinkles and creases, smoothing the rest of the leg and adding a flange at the top of it too.

Next, I'll show you how to use the styroform arms and legs to sculpt on rather than building your own armature

This is what the foam armatures look like. They shrink when you bake them down to about 25% original size.  Remember to build enough clay on your sculpts so that the remaining "shell" is strong enough.

We'll do a hand first.  This hand won't be long enough for what I want to do, so I'm going to beef it up a bit by wrapping it with foil and lengthening it some too.

You could just add clay right to the form if you were going to do 1/4 length shorty limbs.

By the way, Fimo clay was used for these limbs

adding the pad below the thumb, building the palm a bit

doesn't look like a thumb yet does it?

well, lookie there!  It's a thumb :-)

this is the left hand we're doing first

keep smoothing and adding in details

Left hand is finished
Starting the right hand:

building the fat pads on the side of the right hand

this is another tool that does a good job of forming nailbeds

now, on to adding the fingers

right hand, finished

I hope you've enjoyed the Hands and Feet Tutorial. 

I know there are many photos on this page.  If you have problems with getting them all to load please let me know.

Next is sculpting a mini OOAK doll

Back to Page One of the Sculpting Tutorials

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