Things You'll Need:
- Clay
- Cutting wire
- Rolling pin
- 2 dowels of the same size
- Clay shaping and modeling tools
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Step 1
Decide how large you want to make your sculpture. If you're sculpting a larger model, a block of red or gray clay is best, but if you want to make a smaller model, polymer clay is easy to find and work with.
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Step 2
Decide what colors you want your figurine to be. You can choose to make a monochromatic sculpture using just the color of the clay, you can mix clay colors (this works best with polymer clay), or you can paint or glaze the clay to change its color.
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Step 3
Use the cutting wire to cut off a piece of clay that is manageable to work with. If your sculpture has multiple segments or parts, get enough clay to complete one part at a time so that it doesn't dry out while you work.
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Step 4
Use the dowels and rolling pin to roll clay out to a specific thickness (the thickness of the dowels) if you want to make a clay base or need a clay slab for your sculpture. You can also cut pieces out of the slab using other clay tools and add them to your sculpture.
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Step 5
Fuse different pieces of clay while sculpting using scoring (digging crosshatches into the surface) and slip (a clay and water mixture). Use slip to clean up the seams in your model and add detail and texture using clay tools after you have fused the pieces.
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Step 6
Attach your clay sculpture to a wooden base by fixing it to a screw driven through the wooden base. Alternatively, you can put your model on a clay base using scoring and slip methods.
