"The challenge of really fine detail?" Topic

Both the number and type of stages you break a sculpt into depends both on its size and detail, and to try improve my abilities I've been attempting some "true scale" old fashioned 25mm figures (ie no chunky oversized features and caricatured proportions). With heads only a little over 3mm tall the height between eyes and mouth forming the majority of the face is only about 1mm, resulting in really tiny faces smaller than many modern 15mm and comparable to some of the largest 10mm figures on the market. I've sculpted down to 2mm figures so the size on its own isn't a problem per-se, it's the amount of detail I'm trying to incorporate.

Masters like Tom Meier, Gael Goumon and Angel Terol sculpt amazing portrait likenesses at much smaller sizes with careful definition of the curve of an eyelid or shape of a lip. If working at larger scales I'd achieve this by sculpting the head as a skull shape, allowing this to solidify and working thin layers of additional putty over the top to define each feature. I find this prevents deformation of the basic head shape when working the smaller details directly into the soft putty of the bulk of the head. When individual features become no more than one or two tenths of a mm in any direction I'm finding that smoothly adhering/blending in pieces of putty smaller than specs of dust to be almost impossible.

I'm assuming the masters mentioned above must work more of the detail of their small faces from a single piece of putty, relying simply on delicacy of touch and timing in terms of judging the rate of curing of the putty to achieve their amazing results.

I suppose my question to other sculptors out there is when attempting "more detailed" work to what extent do you use the techniques you'd use on larger sizes, simply using less material, or do you prefer to stick to simpler/cruder techniques and just try to push for more fine control?

My experience is that the amount of layers decreases the smaller the piece gets. I´m usually sculpting in 20mm and with growing experience I´ve moved towards sculpting everything from a single layer on top of a metal dolly. Same for the few 15mm I´ve done so far.

Whenever I do 28mm I´m usually building up more layers on the body. Details on the face are difficult, but again I try to build them with 1-2 layers at most, otherwise it gets much harder to make the putty stick on the hardened layers.
Working with half-cured putty could be a solution, i.e. apply the next layer while the prior one is still sticky but more solid than your fresh layer, but that can be tricky.

Not sure that helps, but it should answer your question ;)

Cheers, I don't suppose there is a "correct" answer we will all work differently.

I've been increasingly trying to do more of my work at different stages through the cure of the putty to avoid adding tiny bits on top of fully cured putty, but once you've become accustomed to one way of working it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and I will keep pushing heads out of shape having got used to a rock solid skull under a thin skin of putty

I make tiny sculpting tools for putting in small details. Just take a piece of sturdy wire, bend and/or file the working end to what you need, and glue the wire into a dowel (or something similar that's easy to handle.) Made some triangular shaped ends (> for putting the indentations into neck and wrist ruffles of both 15mm and 28mm sculpts. Worked pretty well (though more practice is needed. ;-) Also made a "nostril punch" (two adjacent very small diameter wires) that can be gently poked underneath a nose (a small detail not likely to be noticed, but, minis have to breathe too… ;-)