"Conversion tips-Green Stuff" Topic

Looking for some tips on simple figure conversions including tools etc.
Just tried beards and some hair and went ok. I appreciate trial and error but good advice can save hours of frustration :) Any blogs etc.?

For handles, gun barrels, flag poles etc. its much easier to use brass\metal rods or tubes and then add green stuff to make the ends or other pieces.

As a "small-time" converter like yourself, I find Procreate marginally superior to Green Stuff. Difficult to explain, but it just behaves a little bit better. The grey colour also makes it a bit easier to make out all the detail. I've always found the greenness of Green Stuff a bit difficult on the eyes. Procreate has a shorter working time, though.

It might not be worth it switching to Procreate if you've already bought Green Stuff, but if you're the curious, experimenting sort, you might want to keep it in mind next time you're shopping for modelling materials.

Regardless of which putty you use, sculpt with wet tools.

The biggest factor is time. Green stuff has a working life of up to three hours. Typically you'll have less then that but that depends on things like temperature and humidity.

After you put it down give it some time to set up (15 to 30 minutes) repeatedly smoothing it.

Epoxy putties have "memory". They want to flow back into lat shape. How much they flow depends on how much they've cured. So if you sculpt a box early in the process you see the edges round off and you'll have to reshape it several times until it loses its memory.

Procreate has less memory, so as Rhoderic says, it behaves better but has a shorter working time (about half of Kneadatite's Green Stuff).

Mixing the two gives me an ideal working time, but the finished sculpt is a very unappealing looking dull olive.

I do quite a lot of small conversions with Green stuff. The best tips I received form sculptors were to only use a little at a time as it becomes pretty much unworkable for most things after about half an hour.

Also the best tip I ever received was to mix a bit of vasseline into the mix when you want to get really smooth finishes and it stops that crumbly feel you get when it starts to go off or is overworked.

I had a good tip for making thin straps. Sandwich some green stuff between two layers of plastic card which has been coated in vasseline. Press down hard so you get very flat surface and leave to dry. The vasseline prevents it from sticking so you can peel away a flat sheet of green stuff and cut out your straps or ribbons. This is really useful for making sword baldrics.

Steve.

I'd like to try Procreate, thanks for the tip.

For tools I just use the point of a scalpel blade, a pin and a cocktail stick/toothpick. I bought some sculpting tools but they all felt too clumsy – something dental would be better I expect. Always keep tools just about wet but not sloshing with water to avoid sticking. Once the green stuff starts to cure I find I can get a smoother surface that when it first goes on.

I use a similar technique as noted above to get ribbons to use as straps and sashes.

Don't try and do a whole figure all at once. I leave models part way through to harden so I don't damage the work I've already done.

When initially adding green stuff to models I invariably started to cut 50% of it away and have learnt how little bulk you often need. I'm still fairly new to it but it's amazing that with practice you do get better at it quite quickly.

Great tips. Thanks guys. Will get some Porceate as it sounds perfect for me. I take it figure needs washed if using Vaseline.
Have no yet cut or sculpted anything other than pre hardened clay.