I'd love to try my hand at sculpture, especially with clay and stone. I'm a bit of a wannabe fine artist, so I'm looking to make human figures on a tiny scale. However, I have no idea how I'd get started with such a hobby.
Take a class I guess. A lot of universities run summer or night courses for this sort of thing. Not sure how much it would be but I can imagine if you search around a bit you could find something that isn't extortionate.
It would mean you can get a feel for it without forking out for tools and supplies plus you get to do it in a group which can be fun. A teacher as well, obviously.
There are a few different materials used for tiny scale sculpting, and none of them are (natural) clays or stone. Generally you'll be using a synthetic compound for fine detail work:
Epoxy putties, two part materials that must be mixed before they are used and will cure within the space of an hour or so. Polymer clays, which cure through heating like conventional clays (albeit with much lower temperatures) but are much better at holding fine detail, and they won't dry out.
Epoxy putty is Milliput, or Green Stuff (the stuff used in most wargames miniature sculting) and a number of other similar products and polymer clays are best represented by Super Sculpey.
I find epoxy putty a bit difficult to work with because it's a lot more plastic than the clays and tends to be very sticky, You need to push and pull at it more than carve it and it will harden completely within a couple of hours once you've mixed it.
Super sculpey and the like can be used more like traditional clay on a small scale; it's a bit sticky, but you can carve at it. Super sculpey also has the advantage of a hugely prolonged working life, as you need to bake it at a 100C or so to cure it and up until you do that it will remain malleable.
Unfortunately I don't have experience with actual clay in anything smaller than a full sized head sculpt, and none of the clay I've worked with was ever used for a final product. Just sacrificial masters for mould making. I think you should look at super sculpey, if you want a hobby at home. If you want to work with clay definitely look around for courses and things in local colleges though.
Thank you for the advice so far, lads. I will look into the products mentioned. Just out of curiosity, though, on what scale would I need to work to use natural materials?
Again, human bodies, mainly. As much detail as I could possibly get there. I can mainly see myself making at least or bigger-than lifesize sections of the human body. Hands, heads or feet for example.
Yes, but human bodies can have different levels of detail. Modern statues are often made in clay then cast in some variety of concrete to look like stone, and aren't terribly detailed. On the opposite end of the spectrum are things like this which are mostly made from a number of different chemicals similar to latex and silicone. There's a lot of fibreglass in there too for structure.
The statue-style thing is the most likely contender.
There are a couple of things you need to think about as well as scale: do you want to sculpt in the final material, or is the sculpt going to be used to make a mould?
(Some variety) of clay is good for human sized bits. You can get most of the important lines and creases and a good imitation of skin texture in it. I'm only experienced in using clay for masters though, then moulding it before it dries and discarding the original sculpt.
