Well it's finally done, my very first article. I've already noticed that I should have taken a bit more pictures, and that not all the pictures are perfect and sharp...ah well lets call it a lack in experience.
So on to the fun stuff:
PreparationFirst some basics on how I sculpt:
The tools I use are:
I use the tweezer for creating the rough shape of whatever I'm working on. The upper tool of the 4 is the GW sculpting tool, I didn't use it on this model but it's very handy when your trying to create a flat surface (armour).
The other 3 are somewhat the same and I just use the one that works easiest. (when I added some scales at the wing-joints of my forest dragon I had to work round the arms, wings and body so I switched very often)
The first thing you should remember is to always keep your tools wet, some use euhhh some grease stuff (we call it vaseline in holland) others use spit, I use water and that works good enough for me. It keeps the greenstuff from sticking to your tools.
The second thing is that you need to have a base where you work from, you can't sculpt without it because you keep pushing the model to the side. Therefor I added a pin to the miniatures head, this would keep the nose in place when I'm sculpting it.
You'll also notice that there is already some greenstuff on the model, that is because I first added some hair and eyes to the head. (the head is from the empire knightly order box, but originally it had a helmet. Should you use a normal head you might want to cut some of the hair, when you keep the hair in place the wolfhead will be to big.
Third, it always pays to have some examples of what you want to sculpt, be it a drawing, an other model or some picture. I used the teutogen guard standard bearer:
The SculptingYou could create the entire head in one go, but since I'd be adding a banner that would end up very close to the wolf head I decided to add the ears later.
Ok, first you mix up your greenstuff and add it, since the wolf head is generally a nose and a part with eyes and ears I also added the greenstuff in two parts.
Notice that I folded the greenstuff back around the pin.
=>
We then have a head with two balls of greenstuff on it, time to pick up my tweezers and give some shape to them:
define the nose, flatten the balls of greenstuff down to the cloak so you can connect them (make sure you have a bit of overlap between the greenstuff and the cloak)
Notice that I already marked the places for the eyes, make sure that left and right is in the same line. Do this by turning your model a lot and keep looking at it from different angles.
The next part lacks some pictures, sorry for that.
I sculpted the fur (more on that at the end) at the side and back of the head as well as between the eyes.
I sculpted the eyesockets and the teeth
The teeth are not that difficult to make, first draw a horizontal line where the teeth meet the upper lip.
Then continue by pushing vertical lines between the teeth and curve them slightly.
The nose is a bit more difficult to explain, make sure it is symmetrical and look a lot at the example.
The eyes require a lot of work, keep looking at them from different angles constantly. Notice the difference between the right and left side on the pictures, the left side looks more dangerous because it has a slight curve in it.
Add the eye itself later by putting in a tiny ball of greenstuff.
Because I did the ears seperseparately the rest of the head I let the head cure for a night.
The next day I added a new ball of greenstuff:
and gave it a rough shape with my tweezers:
I used the rest of the ball of greenstuff to create the new part of the cloak and added a little ball of greenstuff between the ears for I thought there wasn't enough between them:
Then you just shape the ears, I can't really explain how to that just try until it looks good. Keep checking for differences between left and right.
That was it for the head, I added the standard:
I also wanted him to have paws over his shoulders so I added some greenstuff sausages and an other ball of greenstuff to connect it to his cloak
Then you sculpt the fur on his back and besides the ears.
I sculpt the fur by creating lots and lots of descending lines, start with big rough shapes and keep adding smaller ones until you are satisfied.
Detail:
The same goes for his paws and your done:
I'll answer any questions you have, and I'll probably be doing another 14 of these cloaks and heads since I need 3 units of 5. So I could try and make more photos of specific parts of the sculpting.
