Sculpting Clay & Tools
- With the right tools and clay, you can sculpt a masterpiece.Contours in Clay image by John Sfondilias from Fotolia.com
Use professional sculpting clay and tools to create unique artworks for sale, as a hobby or for personalized gifts. Clay modeling offers freedom of expression, made possible by the plastic nature of the medium, whether you choose traditional or newer polymer-based clays to craft items like popular game characters or figures from fiction, flowers or free-form sculptures. Your imagination is the only limit when armed with the proper tools. - A basic sculpture tool is the most frequently used item in the studio, it's approximately 6 inches long and shaped like a pencil made from hardwood or plastic. The tool has one rounded, pointed end for edging, making small holes, cutting clay and tidying up the sculpture. The other end is a flat spatula shape used for smoothing the texture of small areas after applying extra sections of clay, such as arms, to a sculpture.
- A small cutter is approximately 5 inches long and made from hardwood or plastic and stainless steel. The tool has two smooth metal loops, a square one at one end and a round one at the other. Use it to cut into the clay to remove sections from sculptures, by scraping it along the surface. The round end is especially useful for adding fine detailing to hands and faces.
- The scraper tool is a clay modeling tool approximately 7 inches in length, made from hardwood or plastic. Some models have a metal-covered end for extra durability. Use the wider, flattened scraper end as a cutting tool to take off unwanted sections of clay, smooth and scrape the clay's surface. The smooth, narrow end is useful for cutting and smoothing the sculpture.
- A rubber kidney is a smoothing tool made from rubber or soft, flexible plastic and used for the initial flattening of large areas of rolled-out clay. Sections are smoothed out with a firm pressure applied on this tool, in several passes over the clay. Hold the tool in the palm of your hand with the indent against the tops of your fingers inside a closed hand and sweep across the clay. This tool is used to remove the throwing rings, or lines on hand-thrown clay pots.
- Polymer clay is an easy-to-use medium for home sculptors without access to a kiln for firing traditional clay sculptures, since it can be fired in an ordinary electric or gas oven. Clays come in a variety of colors and textures, are easily combined to create new colors. Recent concerns about the safety of polymer clays (they contain phathalates) are easily answered. Clays must not be consumed or used by very young children who may put them in their mouths, or worked with kitchen tools, like rolling pins, that are also used for food.
