Chaos before Order

After many years of being rather nomadic, I finally have a permanent home! Which means- a home for all my hobby stuff! This is our designated craft room, and I am currently in the process of unpacking boxes, some of which have been in storage for a few years.... so watch this space for interesting time capsules!

As you can can see our two rather big craft desks (one of which is designated for my girlfriends crafty stuff) are currently covered in an assortment of crap. Which has made it a bit tricky to get anything much done recently.

However, I've been to two sculpting masterclasses recently and thought I'd share my experiences with you.

The courses were run by Alex from Warploque Miniatures at a studio space in Nottingham. Both courses took two days each.



The first was a beginners course in miniature sculpting and the second was building on this, focusing on larger creatures/monsters.

On the first day of the beginners course we began by looking at armature and face construction. I started off too small with my armature, so he turned into a weedy halfling!



I was quite pleased with my grumpy giant face, considering I've never felt like I could draw a face before.

Some examples of creating different textures- here you can see scale mail and veiny skin.

On the second day I had a go at sculpting a fleshgolem and a goblin face

Here's a close up of the grumpy giant.

I've made a few alterations to the goblin face since I didn't have time to finish it on the course but got a way to go before I'm happy with it.

Still need to bulk out the flesh golem so his body matches his fists!

In the second workshop we started looking at larger sculpting by making a dragon armature.

We drew a lot of inspiration from nature and real reptiles, however, since I really wanted to make a Griffon, I snuck in some musculature from a lion to get in practice. He's still far from finished but this is as far as I got on the first day.

My girlfriend thinks he looks like the dragon from Never-ending Story.

On the second day I started my Griffon and we looked at other body textures such as fur, feathers and scales.

Since we started a specific animal on the first day, I didn't have enough time to really get into the project I had set out to do (which would be my only criticism of the course).

Again, he is far from finished but it will give me plenty to focus on when the craft room is all sorted.

And finally, here are the Griffon's wings which I started and are a work in progress.



I'd really recommend checking out a course by Alex, its definitely worth it if you're looking at getting into sculpting or want to hone your skills.