plasticine armature

I began by making the frame for the torso out of wire, tying the pieces together. I have used this wire in the past to make other things so I had no problem with this part.

Below is something else I made out of wire a while ago.















then I proceeded to add the plasticine on top of it, I had a problem with this part because every time I tried to reshape it bits of wire would stick out and would be hard to cover up, I think this was mainly due to me using one thin layer and then pressing it down rather than building it up in layers.



I made the arms and legs separately and held them together to the body just with the clay, I did this so that the arms, legs and head would be relatively easy to detach so that I could change the parts.




A finished and unfinished leg.





to the right in this image you can see the head, I just stuck this in to the torso and it stayed on pretty well.














for the hair I flattened a piece of plasticine and cut it out to the shape I wanted, I inserted piece of wire in to it to give it some rigidity so it didn't loose its shape.



the biggest problem I found with using a wire armature was with moving the hands, they weren't flexible enough as I had tied the wire together to firmly and didn't allow for any movement, also the clay kept tearing in places when it moved. I tried to fix this by adding more clay and smoothing it over but this just made the model too chunky and in the end I decided to go for the aesthetics and have the arms stationary. The arms detach, so I could always make better ones in the future and replace them. I also had some trouble with the feet and keeping the model standing up, this was because the wire for the feet was made in loops which stuck out a bit at the bottom and made it off balance. I fixed this by adding more plasticine but I would have preferred to keep the feet small.












the finished piece, painted. the face is just tiny pieces of black plasticine that are removable. I am quite happy with how this turned out considering it is my first real model I have made out of plasticine, next time I will make sure the feet are capable of supporting the weight. I would like to have defined the jaw more, I think it lost some of its shape when I was painting it