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37 Clay is what you call mud, the kind you step in in crossing a stream. They reduce it with heat, take out the water and replace the water with mineral oil to make Roma Plastilina, the professional sculptor’s choice for modeling sculpture. Building a sculpture out of clay is correctly called “modeling”. It has nothing to do with someone posing on a model stand. 38 Begin by slicing off 3/8” slabs from the larger block of Roma Plastilina with your double-handled wire tool. 39 Soft clay will load best onto your armature.

00 to build will do quite well for small work. 34 This Little Hercules sculpture stand will turn smoothly and comfortably, and you need it to turn because you're going to be constantly turning your sculptural form. You're not going to stop turning it, because you're always working “in the round” like theater-in-the-round. If you're going to start working on big pieces, you're going to want a sculpture stand. And you want to have a concrete floor and to avoid tracking clay all over the house you want to have a pair of shoes just for the sculpture area, and then get out of those studio-only shoes before you walk around the house.

Pipe must be cut with a hacksaw. 24 Now you're ready to start sculpting a beginning head-form, but you might first want to know about professional commercial wire-built armatures. 25 Commercial aluminum-wire armatures are available through Sculpture House, and in the case of human or animal figures which must be cut up for the mold-making, are the only sensible way to go. In the case of complex figures, your wire armature will not survive, but replacements are available and relatively cheap. 26 Putting the commercial armature together is as simple as A-B-C.