Materials Tools (shown below) Polymer clay Steel wire for armature Floral tape Aluminium foil Glass

Glass tiger-eye beads for eyes Mineral oil Atelier mediums: matte varnish, acrylic binder Acrylic Paint Hair (I use Viscose) Fabri-tac glue Epoxy Putty Sand paper of various grades Acetone (acetone-based nail varnish remover will do)

First, a little about tools. Your most valuable and important tools are your hands, but for particular areas and detail work, you sometimes need additional tools. Tools are highly individual, and one artist's tools might be completely useless to another artist, so collect only the tools you think you will use as opposed to gigantic sets of generic tools. The above are the tools I find most useful. Ball-point stylus tools are my favorite, they are useful for blending, denting, and for small detail work in particular. I have a set of dental tools, which can come in sets of dozens, but I only really use those with spade-like ends for smoothing and blending large areas. A blade like that of an X-acto knife or absolutely necessary for me both when the sculpture is soft, and for working it after it's been baked. Rubber clay/colour shapers are another fabulous tool useful for sculpting fur textures, detail work, and making a much smoother indent then a needle tool could. Needle tools are good for outlining where muscles or other features will be placed, or engraving deep marks.

Trimming tools are generally for refining pots during throwing, but I find them useful for carving out areas like in between legs, where a knife will not reach. Other tools I use are paintbrushes for smoothing out small areas and pliers for making armature.

This is the wire I typically use for armature. It's a 14-gauge Steel wire, quite stiff. You can get large rolls at any hardware store, or a huge superstore that has a section for tools and the like.

The first real step is figuring out your armature design. It's not necessary to take the pose you'd like into consideration, just the basic anatomy of the creature you're going to sculpt. When doing this I generally follow the bones in the legs, and then run the wire in the centre of the main body.

Here I've used two pieces of wire, one for the head, horn, neck, body, and tail, and one for the front legs (bent over and looped through the body wire.) the two pieces are secured together loosely by floral tape.

Back legs! I'm lucky to have it standing up at this point, the armature will wobble all over the place but it's nothing to worry about. Don't try to get it into the pose you want at this point, it's easier to deal with that once the armature is set, as it were.

I take aluminium foil and fold it over several times, then wrap it around the armature, starting at the joints. This secures them into place. The foil needs to be pounded down so it's solid to give the sculpture a real stable base

Here I'm using masking tape to bind together several bits of foil that were in danger of falling off I generally don't foil the legs as it means the clay will lay too thinly there, and areas where clay is very thin are much less stable and are more apt to breaking or splitting during baking.

I wrap floral tape around the entire armature next. Clay does not adhere well to foil, so wrapping it up allows adherence, and holds the armature together.

Once the armature is all secure, I use the pliers to grip the legs and such just below the "joint" and bend them into the position I'd like.

The completed armature in the final pose. I say final, but it's possible still to move things around once the clay is on, nothing is final until the sculpture is baked, and even then alteration is easy.

oops, I decided the butt could be compacted a little better, so I use my heavy pliers to smack it into place. This can be done all over the sculpture, and the nature of the floral tape allows it. If there are areas where the tape comes loose, more tape can be applied.

I start applying large amounts of clay in slightly flattened discs. It doesn't matter if there is obviously too much in one area, it's easier to apply it on mass and then carve it than it is to apply to little and then build it up, as it's easy for air to become trapped when clay is added and cause cracks as the trapped air heats and expands.

More clay!

Oh dear, he's looking a little fat here, but it'll all be smushed into the right place eventually. The important thing is just getting in on.

I've smoothed him down a bit here, using smoothing tools and warm fingers.

Here I've added clay lower down the leg and started building it up the neck. I started carving the body down a little as the weight of all the clay was putting a strain on the legs.

Here I'm carving the leg into the basic shape I want. It will be refined later.

For the hooves I carve out the area under the fetlock and fold the clay back down onto the hoof.

With the leg cut down to size a bit.

Next I smooth down the back leg a little. If you've ever used a pottery wheel you may know what I mean when I say while doing this the most important thing is to keep the fingers totally stiff, and as you move up and down to force the excess clay in whatever direction you're moving. If you are soft-handed with it, then you will only end up emphasizing the lumps and bumps already there.

I decided the leg was too thin in this area, so a wad of clay has been added and melded on using a ball-point stylus.

The right back leg gets some clay! I treated it the same as the other legs.

The front leg had clay added to it in a large amount, but it was smoothed down too thinly in the area my fingers are. Here I'm applying a scrap of clay that came from an area during carving to bulk it up.

More clay is added to the right shoulder to give it a good rough shape

big wads of clay are added to either side of the neck armature and pressed on.

I smoothed the neck on with the same solid motion I described earlier, to force the clay to go where you want it to go instead of letting the lumps guide your fingers.

Oh my! He's looking rather demented. There will always be times like this when your sculpture makes you cringe, but you just have to work through it. Here I have added a lump of clay for his head.

The back of his neck was a bit stubby and screwed up, so I rolled out a snake of clay and added it on using a smoothing dental tool.

The neck bulked up a bit, the head is too small and will need additional clay.

But for some reason I wanted to do the tail first, so I rolled out a long snake of clay. A good tip for rolling like this is to use both hands. for some reason I used to roll with the palm of one hand and be sad that the ends of the clay twisted around all over the place, but in a ceramics class we were told to use a few fingers of both hands and roll them a the same time, moving up and down the clay in a mirror image.

I made a slice down the centre of the tail-snake and applied it over the tail armature as seen here. It is smoothed in the same way the neck and legs were, using firm motions that force the clay where you want it to go.

More clay has been added to the head and carved away, and he's looking a little less freakish.

Some people prefer to imagine fantastical creatures as being sexless, but I'm not one of them! I like the things I make to look like they could in fact be real, so giving them the not so pretty parts or imperfections as well as the pretty and perfected parts is important to me.

Here I've worked on the hindquarters a little more. I know I keep jumping from one part to the next, but there is a reason for doing that which I find important- that no part becomes too "finished" while the rest still needs to be picked up and worked on. It is possible to work that way in mediums like epoxy putty, because after a few hours the completed area is hard and cannot be ruined while you work on the rest, but in a medium like polymer clay, the whole thing is soft until it is baked, and it is way too easy to destroy hours of hard work by an accidental fall, smear, poke, or other typical event.

Oops, been doing my unicorns backs wrong! I found this rather good anatomical diagram of the back, so I'm amending the sculpture to fit it better. I've marked out the areas with my needle tool that will need to have clay moved around

This is a closer view of my filthy smoothing tools, they're what I use to push the clay around in the following steps.

Here I've roughly mashed down the clay additions I made to the shoulders and sides when I was comparing the sculpture to the photos.

I follow my needle-tool guidelines and smooth the clay away from the spine.

Here I'm using that technique I keep harping on about. Using the rump to steady my hands, I draw my fingers back using very solid pressure. I'm not pressing too hard- I don't want big gouges in his sides, but I'm using a steady even force.

Time for a little more work on the head. Here I've pressed in the beads I use for eyes, being careful to make sure they are placed in the exact same position either side of the skull. It's also important to make sure they protrude the same amount when viewed from the front.

A wad of clay is placed around the eye, the features of the eye will be sculpted from this.

Eek! More clay is added to bulk up the face...

...And then carved back off...

...And then added back on...

I've found a look I think I like! Faces for me are a process, and I'll go through quite a few looks before I settle on one. I mark out where the main facial structure will be using my needle tool.

I slice into the front of the head and add a wad of clay around it to form the basis for the mouth.

Using a ball-point stylus, I smooth down the marks I've made and the clay I've added...

...And then decide I want the face to look different, so use the stylus to push the clay around.

After a bit more pushing, I use the stylus to place a few little features in and indent places I want to be deep.

It's important to view the face from all angles to make certain it's symmetrical. Eyes are often deceived by lighting and your own mind telling you what should be there instead of what is- so a useful thing to so is feel your sculpture all over, especially areas like the face with your eyes closed, or looking away. You are far more likely to spot imperfections with your fingers and mind than you are with your eyes.

Now that I've finished mashing the face into something I like, I use a paintbrush with a little mineral oil on it to smooth down rough areas.

The face will be getting a little more work, but it's time to do some more detailed work on the body.

Using the needle tool, I draw lines onto the sculpture to mark out muscle lines. Some areas of large muscle are simply sculpted using a thumb or a few fingers, as shown here with the shoulder muscle.

I also used only fingers for the shoulder on this side. The neck has been detailed using the ball-point stylus and fingers, and the same can be said for the legs.

A wad of clay is added to the horn armature, and then smoothed and carved down until a smooth spear.

I use a firm clay-shaping tool to engrave the basic horn design.

I then push the clay gently away from these lines using a ball-point stylus.

Once I have the basic shape right, I smooth it down using a flat-sided paintbrush.

He's finally gotten his front right hoof! I added it simply as a wedge of clay with a hole the same diameter as the armature knob onto which it would slot. I filled the hole with a little Sculpey transfer medium and meshed it on with a stylus.

I should probably put more effort into my ears, but they are always very simple diamondshaped wedges of clay, flattened and scored at the bottom, and folded and pinched to look like this. I apply a little transfer medium to the scored area, score the area they will be placed on the head, and then squish them on.

Here is the "complete" sculpture. I have used fresh clay to secure his hooves onto the silicone plate I'm baking him on (you can use anything, but ceramics work better than metals, as metals can heat to high temperatures and burn the bottom of your sculpts.) Now he goes into a convection oven at 275f for about 45 minutes.

Here he is baked. Those cracks are pretty typical of having either put him in a heated oven, removing him from a hot oven before he's cooled, or having trapped air pockets under the clay which expand and contract. In my case it's probably the latter two, but they are easily fixed so I don't worry too much about them.

A close-up of some of the cracks.

Good god! this happened because the clay I used to steady him during baking bonded too much with the hooves. But again, it's not a problem... I prefer it this way!

For creatures that have three points of contact, or even some with four, balance can be a problem. At this point the sculpture tended to tip over one way at the slightest touch, very dangerous. What needs to be worked out is which legs need to be either broken and repositioned, or which feet need to be carved down or extended. Breaking legs and repositioning them is a more desperate measure then working on feet, but with epoxy putty, anything is possible.

I've taken a hardened piece of clay that was part of the lump I used to steady the legs during baking and carved it so it more or less fits onto the hoof (with enough glue)

I extended the back right leg, and the front leg with epoxy putty. A good indicator of good balance is standing him up, and gently pushing him from each side to see at which point he falls (be ready with the other hand to catch him, of course.) When an equal distance is required to knock him over from both sides, he's balanced. If more pushing is needed on one side and less on the other, then consider adding a tiny amount of epoxy clay to a hoof, or subtracting from the other hoof, until the balance is equal.

I mix up some epoxy putty, dilute it with water a little, and use the x-acto knife to spread it over the cracks in the manner one spreads peanut butter on toast.

He got a little epoxy putty on the horn, brow, and filling in the gaps in his legs too.

After a day, once the putty is fully hardened, I sand him down a bit as there are marks from the epoxy putty and fingerprints in the original polymer clay.

Fully sanded.

Here I'm going over him with acetone on cotton pads, this serves to help any remaining gaps vanish and buffs the whole sculpt.

If I tried to paint him at this point, the paint would flake in areas, might not take, and it will generally be a disaster. Binder Medium seals the sculpture and provides an adequate surface for acrylic paint.

After a few coats of binder medium, they're always deliciously shiny. It'll take a few hours to fully dry.

The first coat of acrylic is applied. I use A2, Interactive, and Windsor & Newton Artist's acrylics.

After only one coat, it tends to look like a complete disaster, but the more coats are added, the smoother and more refined it gets.

A detail view of the face during this traumatic time.

When I apply the second coat, I brush in the opposite direction as the first. For example if the first coat was horizontal, I'll make the second vertical. This serves to fill in the tiny brush-marks caused by going in one direction.

I used at least three coats of paint over the whole sculpture, and some areas have four or five. the final coats of paint are watered down to help the acrylic flow into small brushmarks that may be remaining.

After the final coats of white paint, the other colours are added. Depending on the colour one coat may be fine, but usually a few are needed.

The horn is blue acrylic mixed with an interference blue pigment and glossed. At this point I apply Atelier Matte Medium & Varnish to seal the acrylic. I usually apply three coats of this, and it is a very important step as it helps to prevent the acrylic peeling or chipping off.

Starting at the bottom of the leg or whatever area needs to be "haired," I make a little wad of hair (this is hand-dyed viscose,) apply a little Fabri-Tac to it, and stick it on, pressing down to ensure it fully attaches.

I then repeat this dozens of times, working my way upwards.

Varying lengths are needed, and I usually have little wads of different lengths all set out in front of me. A little pair of embroidery scissors are perfect for cutting hair to the length needed, and I use a comb to brush it out to a natural look. I usually trim by cutting in the direction of the hair as opposed to across it where it would be obvious it had been cut.

-The New Unicorn TutorialThis tutorial is somewhat different from my previous ones in that I'm not narrowing down the materials too much. The actual sculpting medium you use is entirely up to you, and this tutorial will focus on my process more than anything. I sculpt using many materials- polymer clay, air-dry stoneware clay, wax, plasteline, paper clay, and epoxy putty- but for all of them the techniques used vary little. This tutorial centres around designing, sculpting, molding, casting and finishing a piece. I hope you will find it useful in whatever medium you sculpt in.

*Disclaimer* Casting is a very intensive, time-consuming, dirty, dangerous process- not to

mention costly. It has taken me many many hundreds of dollars and almost five years to get to learn it. If you have never used silicone before then please start with simple triangular-composition pieces, and get the little sample packs of silicone instead of gallon buckets. All this unless you have lots of money, thick skin, and a reckless and impulsive temperament, in which case go right ahead and start large!

Materials
-This is simply a list of everything I used, please do not regard it as a shopping list! Use whatever suits youI've put parenthesis around the brands I use, though you can, of course, pick your favorite makers.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Plasteline Clay (Chavant, Jolly King) Tools (see below) Silicone (mold max 20, smooth-on) Urethane Resin (smooth cast 300, smooth-on) Clear Epoxy Resin (Castin'Craft) Soft Pastels (Rembrandt) Acrylic Paint (Winsor&Newton, Atelier) Vacuum Chamber Vacuum Pump NIOSH Approved Respirator Hair/Fibre Spray Gesso (Krylon) Matte Finish Spray (Krylon) Matte Medium & Varnish (Atelier) Clear Enamel ( SIG) Mineral Spirits (Crown, turpenoid) 18 and 12 gauge steel wire. White Epoxy Putty (Milliput) Fabri-Tac glue Jewel-it glue Polymer clay (Sculpey Firm) Soft Plasteline (Van Aiken)

Delicious tools. Here we have: 1: grabby things Grabby things such as tweezers, pliers, calipers and compass 2: Needle tools Used for texturizing and sketching onto the clay where certain features will go 3: X-acto Blades Absolutely essential for any clay work, to carve. 4: Ball-point tools One of the most useful tools, used for smoothing, indenting, everything. 5: Trimming tools

Used to scoop out areas of clay for rough detailing 6: Brushes Used in combination with a liquid that breaks down the clay (such as mineral spirits) to smooth 7: Dental Tools All-purpose tools used to smooth, indent, and shape 8: Clay shapers Nifty rubbery tools used for making smooth, fine detail

The Clay I will be using, a mixture of Chavant NSP, Jolly King, and Klean Klay. Plasteline is an oil-based clay which will not harden. If using with silicone it is absolutely essential the clay be sulphur-free.

My casting materials, in the middle is the vacuum chamber, mold-max 20 silicone plus activator, and the resin, smooth-cast 300 (for this mold, however, I should be using smooth-cast 305) Also pictured is the ventilator, which is absolutely essential for casting work. It's not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than new lungs. Also the vacuum pump which, as you can see, is about 50 years old. There's no reason you have to get a new shiny one, an old one is fine as long as it works. This creates a vacuum of 700mm of mercury (mmHg.) That's all you need.

My basic planning for each mold sculpt consists of doodles marking undercuts complete with planned areas for air vents, and here I've drawn how the sculpture will connect to, and slot into, its base.

Once the plan is planned, I sketch out a plan for the armature. This plan corresponds to the actual size the model will be, and the body shape I would like (lithe, exaggerated neck) I also include a dorsal view with how the armature will bend in that dimension.

Using the compass, I measure out each section and draw the template onto a plan.

Using pliers, I bend the main 12 gauge wire to fit as closely as possible the armature plan. As you can see, the armature at this point is flat, so I simply take the entire leg in the pliers and bend the whole thing 90 so the knees face forward. Same with the other set of legs.

The skeleton, as you can see the rear right leg is longer because it needs to include an extra part to slot into the base (as shown in the original sketches) At this point the armature is not set in place.

I fix the armature all in place by wrapping thinner (18/20 gauge) wire around and in it. For a polymer clay sculpture, I would probably put a lot more wire around it to give it a lot more substance, but master sculptures for casting are basically meant to be destroyed, so the only function of the armature here is to hold the thing together until that point.

A bit more wire has been added, and the middle was bulked out with aluminium foil. I've also bent the armature into the general design and made a base. The base is essential for silicone casting as the silicone will be poured on top. Sometimes with a simple sculpture or one where three or more points touch the ground, the sculpture can be glued to a base after it's completed, but only one point touches with this sculpture, so it needs to be planned out with a base in mind. I've coated the armature in a non-porous glue called Jewel-It. This will act like floral tape on an armature, which is to

say create a tacky surface which the clay will adhere to.

Here we go! I start by just slapping on clay in the general shape of the sculpture. No detailing at this point, it will only be squished.

The neck is fleshed out a bit, and the blade is used to sheer off chunks of clay and form the general shape of the shoulders.

The sculpture (He needs a name really doesn't he? Let's call him Jim.) Jim has been fleshed out a bit more and has had his neck shaped. The right back leg as you can see has a blob of clay

extending down, which will slot into the base. This is more of a placeholder right now to help me visualize, it will be reworked later.

The best thing you can do in any medium where the whole sculpture stays soft (so epoxy putty and fast-dry clays are excluded) is sculpt the head first. This is because you'll be holding the body in order to work on the head (probably) and if you've already detailed the body, you'll squish it up by holding it. I tend to hold my sculptures by the midriff, and so this is the last place I'll work on. So, here we have the main blob of the head being placed on, the seams being smooth so it is attached, and the beginning of the planning for the basic shape. For sketching out onto the sculpture where features will go, I'll use a needle tool.

The legs have been stuck on by rolling out a snake of clay and pressing it onto the armature roughly carved into shape using the X-acto knife, and I'm inserting glass beads in order to form nice smooth eyes for the casts. I have a little horse skull model back there which I've put musculature onto as a guide.

Little pieces are rolled out and put on Jim's face to indicate major features such as the nostrils and eye ridges, I've

also sculpted out the general shape of the chest.

More pieces are attached for the cheek bone and the upper lip. The nostrils are carved out using the X-acto knife in a circular motion. At this point I'm using the ball-point tools to smooth on the extra bits of clay I'm adding.

All the pieces are smoothed on, and I use the ball-point tool to emboss the large features. I'm going for an arabiantype look. Arabians are, in my mind, the best horse to base a unicorn off of (they can also be based on deer, goats, and mixes of ungulates) because arabians are distinctly different from, say, a thoroughbred. The Arabian has all these arches in his body, the arch of the neck, the stem of the throat, the dip of the short back, the high tail, not the mention large heads and eyes, the gait, and the intelligence. They're fantastical creatures in and of themselves.

I use a paintbrush with mineral spirits to smooth out the facial features to something near what they will permanently be.

The eyes have been fleshed out using the techniques already seen, and I've moved down Jim's body to the shoulders and neck. At this point I'm using the trimming tool to gouge out clay to form the shape of the musculature, all the while I'm smoothing it using my fingers. He's also gotten his ears. These were made by getting two balls of clay, rolling them into ovals, and using one of the pointed clay shapers to form the inside of the ear. They were then attached on. If you're working on a one of a kind sculpt where this will be your final product, you'll want to score the ears where they attach and make sure they're

stuck on really good.

The neck area is fully sculpted here, using mainly the trimming tools and a paintbrush with mineral spirits.

The red clay you see here is Chavant, which is a lot harder on its own than what I've been using thus far. The legs, as you can see, are attached to poles which act as air vents after the model is molded. All undercuts (parts of the model that angle downwards) need air vents in order for the resin to enter them during casting.

The legs are getting some detail now, and as you can see the front left leg is complete

The other side of the sculpture, mostly completed apart from a few feet and the part which will insert into the base.

Jim became a bit hot from being overworked, so I went ahead and threw him in the freezer. This is a good trick for polymer clay and wax too, which also become unworkable when overworked. Plasteline only needs to be in deep freeze for about 10 minutes before it comes out all nice and hard. As you can see here, the right back leg is complete. At this point the sculpture itself is complete. If you're working in polymer clay, this is the point at which you'd bake it, and proceed to the last steps of this guide.

Here is where I went wrong, so so wrong. This is a complex sculpture and I realized that in order to remove the model from the silicone I'd need to access it from the belly, so I'd need to fill in that area so it didn't fill with silicone (it'll make more sense when you see the silicone pictures, it took me a long time to wrap my head around to thinking in double reverse.) So being a bit of an idiot I decided I'd remove the centre support. Big mistake. I quickly realized that the centre support had been the only thing holding the Jim in one certain position, and when removed he started to flex and fall over! His feet were torn off by the sticks, he fell over and got a few dents in his neck and shoulder, and for a few hours it really looked like this would be the end of him.

Good thing for glue. I whipped out some super glue and just started liberally smothering the sticks with it in the places they touched the base, I reattached each foot over and over, them constantly being mangled after fixing. I had spent hours originally working on the feet, yet now I was just slapping them back together. I decided I needed to cut my losses- worst case scenario I'd mold the sculpture, cast a resin, rework the resin cast, then make a new mold from that one. That was the worst case scenario, luckily it hasn't come to that!

Jim got frozen again so he'd stick in place while I built the mold box. I make my mold boxes out of Van Aiken Plasteline, which is really soft and useless for anything other than making a mold box from. Plasteline makes good mold boxes because you can form it around only and inch or so from the body, thus saving a LOT more silicone (if I'd made the mold box as long and wide as the wood base, I'd have needed about 17 cups of silicone, as it was, I only needed 6.)

The mold box going up. After this point I build it inward, staying close to the body. After it's complete I filled it with

water to test if it was water tight and also to measure the volume of water that went in, as that would indicate how much silicone I would need- nearly 6 cups. I haven't included photos of the molding process as I go over that in Moldmaking: A Brief Overview. However, to summarize, I placed Jim and the fridge overnight to minimize the chance of the sculpture falling during molding. In the morning I measured out three cups of silicone at a time, as that's the maximum the bowl I use will hold while allowing for it to expand twice its original volume. I weighed the silicone and then mixed in 10% of that weight in the activating agent. The bowl was then placed in the vacuum chamber and the pump switched on. The silicone sits in the chamber for about 20 minutes or so at 700 mm/Hg. The silicone expands and seems to boil slowly as all the gas is is literally sucked right out of it. Then it is poured slowly into the lowest point in the mold box. The second batch of silicone is prepared at once and poured in too.

You're supposed to wait 16 hours for it to cure, but once it's hard to the touch, it's fair game in my eyes. I peel away the plasteline, seen here with tape for extra support, and a big pink glob with no seeming way in is revealed. Time to get the X-acto knife back out.

After 2 hours or so of carefully cutting up along the inside of each leg, along the belly, up the neck and along the chin, Jim is finally visible.

Hi Jim!

Jim is given a funeral consisting of sticking his flesh into a ball to reuse later, and putting his armature aside to be reused, and we get on with the casting process. As you can see the mold has been taped together, I try as hard as possible to match up all the seams where the silicone was cut. *At this point, put on your gas mask, open all the windows, and get some ventilation going on, also, gloves* The resin is measured out in equal parts, then mixed in a can. Avoid plastic mixing things as the chemicals will dissolve them, and they'll often warp under the heat caused by the reaction between the two parts of resin. Cans are sturdy, wont melt, can be bent to have a spout, and (most importantly for me) they're free. If you don't have excess cans then you need to eat more beans.

The resin is mixed for a minute, then poured into the foot holes. This is the first cast attempt. As you can see, the resin has gone white where it has hardened, and you may also note that a few of the vents don't have white tips. This is bad, it means the air vent is clogged or the resin has hardened too fast, and it means the cast will likely be missing limbs. That was the case here. I went through four casting attempts before getting a viable cast. Most were missing two or three legs, but one had one whole leg, and only half a body. Pretty creepy stuff. I filled a box with rejects. My problem was that I was using my usual smooth-cast 300 resin, which has a demold time of 10 minutes. All well and good but it'll harden in 3 minutes, and that wasn't long enough for this mold, the resin needed to harden slower and be used in combination with the vacuum chamber in order to draw out trapped air. However, for most sculptures smooth-cast 300 is just fine.

Random unicorn legs make awesome parrot toys.

Here is my fifth attempt, We'll call him Jim II. As you can see he's messed up, quite a bit more so than usual, but he has all his legs, and the rest is a matter of trimming and sanding. Jim II is going to be put aside for a few days while I work on the base.

This is the basis of the base! I used a piece of polymer clay and molded it around Jim II's base-stump, then baked it hard.

I've never sculpted water before, so I pulled up a few photos of splashes and basically squished flat pieces of clay onto the base. Ideally the Jims would be touching the base at three points- the main foot, the front right hoof, and the read left hoof- this will minimize pressure on the main leg (although I cast them with a brass rod inserted into the leg resin to reinforce it) and make the whole thing more sturdy. At this point I'm just using my fingers and ball-point tools to smooth the pieces on, and an X-acto blade to cut out little holes.

I realized, after sculpting a few little water-drop balls that I could just stick a bunch of beads onto it! Eureka! As you can see the base has been smoothed out using mineral spirits and a brush. I molded it the same way as I did Jim, this however is a much easier mold, and I didn't degas the silicone because I thought the bubbles would be beneficial, as they would serve to make it more watery!

I cast it in white resin first in order to view more clearly the details. I notice some of the beads look like beads, so using the knife I went into the silicone mold and carved off the little bits that made the bead-holes.

At the bottom was my first casting attempt, as you can see it's almost perfectly clear. This is because I fully degassed the clear resin and put too little activator in, so all bubbles vacated the resin. It's pretty to look at, but it has no action to it, a splash is not perfectly clear, it's partially opaque. This cast also left some gooey uncured resin in the mold which took an hour to clear out, leaving me a little resentful. The middle one was my second attempt, I put too much hardener in and it hardened way too fast and is nothing but bubbles. It's also missing a few top pieces because there was still some goop left in them from the first casting, I finished clearing them out and tried again.

Third time lucky- the top cast is EXACTLY what I was going for, it is a little opaque with bubbles at the bottom, while being clear at the top. The partial opaqueness it also needed to help hide the Jims' base stumps, which are opaque resin.

So now I have a good base, I go back to Jim II. I carve off all the flashing (thin sheets of resin where it leaked into the seams) and sand the model down. If there are distortions from the seams (where the model doesn't line up quite

right) of more than half a mm or so, I'll carve them and go over them with white epoxy putty.

He's pretty much done here. There is some dirt, and discoloration between the epoxy putty and resin, but his general form is alright. I drilled into the forehead, inserted a horn (I make horns on mass and keep them in a box, either cast from resin or made from epoxy putty, this one is the latter) used super glue to fix it in and then sculpted around and up it using the white epoxy putty.

**Put your gas mask back on for this step! Spray Gesso is VERY toxic** I get out the spray gesso and go to town. It's best to hold the can at least a foot away, otherwise the gesso will drip. He gets two or three layers of gesso. He's pictured here in the second base, which is serving as a stand so the main base doesn't get gesso You can, of course, use regular gesso as a base, or a binder medium. But I like the even finish of spray gesso, and I

love the final texture, which is like an egg-shell.

Once the gesso is dry, I paint up his base stump with blue enamel. This would, I hope, give off subtle blue refractions around the base.

Now for "painting" Jim II. It's essential that everything be kept clean here, so wear gloves to deal with the pastel dust, and use clean hands to deal with the sculpture. I've decided to go with pure white for simplicity's sake. Appropriate colours are ground to dust and put in these containers.

Starting with the lightest colours, I use a clean paintbrush to rub in some of the dust. Some people use fingers in the pastel dusting technique, but I find it makes things greasy. A finger is an oily thing.

When the model doesn't seem to want to take anymore colour, add a fine coating of Matte Medium spray, wait for a minute, and keep working. You can build up colour indefinitely this way, but here I need only a few coats. I also went over the rest of Jim with white pastel powder to give him a nice uniformity.

The final colours are added, along with some pink on the joints, between the legs and where the legs meet. I paint his eyes with a small brush and different shades of blue, and use diluted paint to give the muzzle a watercoloury effect. I then use gold enamel and paint the horn and hooves in one coat.

I fit Jim II into his base using hot glue, which will help fuse the clear resin to the white resin. I gave the base of the base a little coat of watery blue paint to carry on the effect. I went over the whole base and eye with clear enamel to maximize the shine, and put about 1mm or so of clear resin in the bowl of the base where the foot is, so make it look like it's underwater a little. As you can see here I have his hair out are ready. It's a mix of random hair I found in my hair drawer (yeah, I have one.) Some is wool I found, there's a little mohair I actually cut off of my Tofu sculpture when I was reworking it for casting, and there's some unraveled yarn also.

I get a little wad of hair, snip the end so it is even, and glue it on using Fabri-Tac (fabri-tac creates an amazing bond with hair that I've never seen any other glue manage, so I recommend it over all other glues.)

Starting from the bottom, I stick locks on going upward, just smoothing each one on as I go. The final piece has to be carefully placed so as to cover the forelock and first part of the mane without looking gluey. But Fabri-tac is good at not looking gluey anyway.

Same happens with the tail, starting at the bottom I work my way to the base, careful to hide the fact that it's glued on. He looks a little crazy here, so his wild wild mane needs to be tamed.

Like Jim II, I suffer from frizz-prone hair, so I wet his locks and coat them in a little hair serum and finish it all up with secret weapon, then he gets a brief blow-dry, and he's done! It really is all THAT simple...

D'awee.

Jim and I both hope you found this helpful!

The longest hair is reserved for the mane and tail, and these are applied in the same way, being careful to try not to show any of the joins. And that's it!