[Juhani]

After seeing suggestions for working out a carving initially in clay I went and bought a small two lb chunk of No. 2 Roma Plastilina. First of all I dont know for sure if this is the stuff that would be recommended for this process. I did do some minimal research on it and figured that I would try this first. Now that I have it and have played a bit what is the proper way to return the cutoffs (for lack of a better word) back to a usable form? And what other suggestions are there for someone who has never used clay at all?

Jonathan

[mark yundt]

The plastilina should work just fine.The pieces you "carve " off can just be pressed back together again,, you should be able to use this over and over again.For small detail I made my own tools out of piano wire, bent it into various shapes and epoxied them into dowels. Yes, I bought quite a few,, and they're not too expensive,,but I wanted specific shapes to do what I wanted that they didn't make, and the very fine wire cuts this clay really cleanly.

[Juhani]

Thanks Mark I also received some info on building an armature for a human body so that will help alot. I had tried to make a model of a cowboy I am going to carve and he broke in half at the knees!

[mark yundt]

O.K. . Not sure of the size of your piece,but with almost any size some type of structure underneath is needed, unless it's just a flat piece.I'm sure you have the info you need,but the armature doesn't have to be fancy,a block of wood,a couple of sticks or hanger wire stuck in to make a basic skeleton and off you go.And see,, you didn't make a mistake, you learned instead what to do..that's great.That's what I said in another post,,,life gives you the test,then you learn the lesson,,In school they gave you the lessons then gave you the test.Have fun with the clay.

[Juhani]

The cowboy is about five inches tall, I didnt think at first that it would break with the size that it was but its only clay and i hadnt gotten very far. I got a roll of copper wire scraps i saved from when i rewired part of the house so those should work fine. Figuring on drilling a couple holes in a block of wood to stick the wire into to hold it standing up. Figure out the dimensions from the pattern and i should be good to go. Did a lot more digging up info on the clay and along with posts from this site feel more than comfortable that it wont break again in those types of locations or anywhere other than maybe small detail if i bother to do more than the basic form. Thanks again!