How to make a Clay Sculpture
By NetRaptor
People have asked me how to make a clay sculpture, and it's something I really have to show you how to do in person. But, barring that, here's a photographic tutorial. Hopefully it'll have enough information to let you make your own sculptures.

I use Super Sculpey for these sculptures. It is a polymer clay. You bake it in your home oven at low tempurature to make it hard, and then you can paint it with anything--I prefer acrylics because they dry faster. Sculpey comes in 5 lb bricks, and it usually takes 1 entire brick to make a sculpture.


 
Supplies
Supplies needed for making a sculpture: (You can find most of them at dickblick.com, but most craft stores should carry polymer clay of some kind.)

Tinfoil
Super Sculpey
Needle-nosed pliers with a wirecutter
About 18 inches of craft or floral wire (anything thin enough to bend)
Various wooden tools (old dental tools sometimes work)
As many pictures as you can find of your subject (in my case, anteaters).
I have used a lot of tools over the years, and these shown here are my favorites. Top: Sculptor's thumb. Left: Brass tools. Bottom: wooden dowels with one end filed to a point, and the other rounded off. Right: Needlenosed pliers.
Armature
Let's get started with the armature, or skeleton, that will support the sculpture. Take about 18 inches of foil and crumple it into a sausage shape, as shown here. Pack it fairly tight--this forms the torso of your animal. For this tutorial, I'm going to make an anteater.
Cut your wire into two pieces, and stick them through the foil body. Bend them so they point down. If they're too long, don't worry about it. It's better to have your wires too long than too short.
Find a picture of your critter--I found some of anteaters--and, using your pliers, bend the wire to make the joints in the legs. For now, just bend back the extra wire that come out the feet--we'll need it later. 

Figure out which way is the head, because the front legs and back legs bend differently. This sculpture's head will be on the right.
Optional step: Depending on the critter you are making, you might want to cover the wire legs with foil. Anteaters have thick, furry legs, so I added a layer of foil so I won't use so much clay later on. This step works for thick-legged creatures, like bears and elephants. For most other animals, like cats or dogs or horses, you want to put the clay straight on the wire.
Beginning Sculpture
Now for the fun part. Rip apart your chunk of clay, knead it with your hands to get it pliable, and cover the foil with it. It doesn't need to be very thick--just so the foil is covered. Cover the legs, but leave the wire sticking out of the feet. This is the point where you want to think about posing your sculpture--one foot lifted, crouching, and so on. No tools needed for this step.
Now we add the head. Take about six inches of foil, crumple it into a ball, and stick it on the shoulders of your sculpture. Sometimes it helps if you stick a bit of wire into the shoulders to act as a "spine", and stick the foil on that. Because this sculpture is an anteater, he has a long, skinny head. Most animal heads you'll make will be a simple round ball. No tools needed for this step.
Start building up the muscles with large chunks of clay. The biggest muscles are in the shoulders and thighs, and they may be flexed, depending on the pose you have chosen. Contracted muscles create a bigger bulge than relaxed ones. 

Also, start really scrutinizing your reference pictures. What makes this animal look unique? How can you duplicate that in your sculpture?

Using a large, flat tool at this point will make smoothing the muscle-clay easier. I used a sculptor's thumb, but you could potentially use a spoon.
Remember to look at your sculpture from all angles as you work. It's amazing how many people will work on a sculpture only from the front or side, and never turn the thing over to see how the other side looks.
I've noticed that anteaters have thick, shaggy forelegs. In fact, they look like a kind of dog with a long snout. I've built up the forelegs accordingly. You can't tell from this picture, but the legs are very wide from the side, and narrow from the front. This is how all animal legs look--they are not round posts.

I've also noticed that the anteater spine forms one continuous arc, like their backs are always humped like an angry cat's. I've added more clay to the back to make the spine higher.
This is the point when my sculptures decide they need a face.

I don't have any glass eyes this small (glass eyes are available from taxidermy catalogues), so clay ones will have to do. These are formed by poking lines into the clay, and etching eyelids around the eye. Anteaters have pretty boring eyes. Usually you take bits of clay and add eyelids, but anteaters don't seem to have them.

The ear is a piece of clay with a groove in it that you roll up and stick in a notch on the head. Check your reference--all animals have different sizes and shapes of ears.

Also, animals ears ALWAYS grow from the sides of the skull. Never the top. Always attach them to the head on the sides, in line with the eye.

This tutorial created for netraptor.org by K. M. Hollar and copyrighted 2004 by K. M. Hollar.