1. Planning the “cuticle” around this claw-thing

I take a warm piece of wax, roll it up and make a snake. I press it where I want the bulk of the cuticle, or fold, to be.

I then take my wax pen, and start to melt the rolls together to form the cuticle mass.

I dig into the wax, both vertically, and horizontally. I try to think about how the wrinkles would look, and draw in that direction.

I decided that I wanted one more “fold” or stairstep flesh buildup, so I add another wax roll.

2. Detailing the skin, Round 1

Taking a sharp-pointed tool, I scribe in finer lines. Although in hindsight, I would avoid this step, because as you will see, I’m about to obliterate the details. It’s still nice to have the trenches dug in, as they DO add texturing later on.

The downside to this sharp tool, and if your wax is still warm, is that you can start erasing your details.

Since the wax is starting to collect a lot of little pieces that break off, I take water and brush away the bits.

3. Turning those hard rocky details into rounded flesh

Ok, this texturing I had still doesn’t suit itself to look like flesh. So I bring in the alcohol torch.

By slightly melting the surface, you see it become plastic looking, or more natural, like flesh you could imagine on this monster. Of course, so much of the detailing I did has disappeared, but some has remained.

Since I still want details, I go add them again. Round 2

4. Finishing it off

Where it all begins to look realistic is when I brush on mineral spirits, and go over it a few times. It takes the details, softens them up to look more like wrinkled folds.

I take a paper towel, suck up the moisture, and also slightly press down on the edges, trying to get rid of any hard bits that haven’t been rounded off.

For any hard edges that don’t look like “flesh” to me, I take a little loop to it (available from Ken’s Tools they are incredibly sturdy, and I use them to dig into wax all the time!)

And there you have it! After the mineral spirits evaporates, the wax won’t be so soft, and I will go in and make the last, final, subtle wrinkle scratches in there too. I am going to try to refine this process a bit, and if anyone has any tips that would help, please critique away at the process. I would love to hear how others use wax to achieve good results.

The reason I want to do this is that I cannot get the organic folds and lines I want, if I start in wax. I’m not saying that wax won’t allow me to get organic folds, I can’t manipulate wax to do it for me yet.

And that is OK. I still get amazing results when I start in wax, but it’s easier to sculpt, say, wavy lines like hair, in Sculpey, I can push it around, reconfigure a curve, while wax hardens to fast for me. See below:

If you haven’t joined the Clubhouse, or seen Erick Sosa’s site and his Mutant Chelonian, PLEASE GO THERE NOW.

Look specifically at the folds in the neck. He did that in SuperSculpey first, baked it and then transferred to wax.

That’s what I’m talking about.

1. Keying up the wings

1. First, I drilled a hole into the back of Illidan. The wing is going to be heavy, so I wanted there to be enough mass of the wing that gets inserted into the back of Illidan to support the weight. I filled the holes with Magic Sculpt (I found Magic Sculpt to be a lot cheaper than aves, but they are very similar products). I then inserted a brass rod, and then inserted wire I twisted into that brass rod. I let that sit overnight to harden. The red dots you see are where all the elbows and joints of the wing “fingers” will be.

2. Adding rest of wing joints and "fingers"

2. Here you see I added the rest of the wing “fingers”, all pre-measured for both wings. They are connected by quick curing plumbers epoxy, to speed up time. I then wrapped floral wire around each finger for the wire mesh and clay to stick to later. Repeat for second wing.

3. Adding bendable mesh to wings

3. Because the wings are so massive, I decided to add mesh as the base of the membranes. I think smaller pieces would be fine with thin layer of Magic Sculpt, but the size of the wings would have caused the sheet of Magic Sculpt to droop. I highlighted in red holes I made where each elbow of the finger would be. I think threaded the wire through those holes to help keep the mesh more secure.

4. Adding glue and "pinching" the mesh

4. After I threaded. I “pinch” the mesh around the wire fingers, so that the mesh sort of falls in the half-way point of the finger. This is so that when I add Magic Sculpt, the membrane will look more realistic, like the membrane is really attached to the middle bone like a bat. I also run a little superglue along the finger, kick it with some Zip Kicker to cure instantly, to hold the mesh in place for the next step.

5. Adding Magic Sculpt to the mesh

5. The last part of preparing the wing for clay/sculpey/wax is to further strengthen the membrane. Here I have pressed bits of Magic Sculpt into the wire, as thin as possible, to create the membrane foundation. I used disposable vinyl gloves for this, and dip my fingers in water, sometimes dipping the chunks of Magic Sculpt into the water directly. This softens it, almost like a slurry, and helps spread it out a bit more easily.

I will let this all harden overnight, and begin adding super sculpey or wax (I still don’t know what I’ll use, I have to see if I have enough wax left to do this.

I’ll add more pics in the next week of the detailing process.