cut-outMy sculpting methods have changed a little from early days and instead of rolling out clay and perforating through a printed image, I now lay clay down directly inside of a silhouette cut-out. I find this method to be more accurate when defining the  thickness of the sculpt and forces me to not rely on guidelines so much. I can still get position of features by overlaying the cut-out and perforating, but I tend to use a pair of dividers more.

A neat trick I’ve also using now is image overlay, this is possible by taking the original image (or sketch) and opening it in Photoshop, then using a photograph of the sculpt (in progress) I place it on top and make the sculpt photo semi-transparent. This gives me a ghost image from which I can make comparisons for position and depth. Now – if you don’t have Photoshop (it is expensive!) try using a web based service called Pixlr – its free and will do the job just as well! Just to prove this see the image below to see how this technique works. You can also see just how much more work my sculpt needs to be anywhere near the original image. Click image to enlargecomparison

Also whilst I’m on the topic of computer software, if your getting images of the internet to work from try this free program out, its called XnView its a graphics viewer which has a tabbed interface – far easier to use when flicking through multiple images.

Wishing you all good health and happiness…

…Rich