My clay keeps cracking and not sticking together, help please

Yael AlcantaraYael Alcantara ✭
in Sculpture
Hi! As the title says, my clay keeps cracking up despite still being soft and un-baked, I’m sculpting a dinosaur head and it was fine for the first 3 hours but after I left for an hour, I came back to a fully broken jaw, it fell off the head in a weird cracked way as if it was already dry but it isn’t. I tried too attach it back but after 20 minutes working on it, it started to crack again and the clay won’t stick together the top of the head, what can I do? I’m using Original Sculpey that I bought from Amazon since it’s a cheaper alternative to Monster Clay. 

Best Answer

  • Sasha BlaschkaSasha Blaschka ✭
    Answer ✓
    Hi there! Is there an armature underneath? I see a bit of wire for the lower jaw, but for Sculpey you really want to use a thinner layer (even an inch thickness is too much), as it's heavy and it will also crack again if you ever cure/bake it.

    Sculpey is much much softer than Monster Clay. It looks like the weight of the clay is making it fall/tear over time. I would make sure that most of the sculpture is some other material, (like aluminum foil etc), and then layer the Sculpey over it. Think of it like a skeleton! The armature is the skeleton/muscles, and the clay is the skin.

Answers

  • Yael AlcantaraYael Alcantara ✭
    Sasha Blaschka said:
    Hi there! Is there an armature underneath? I see a bit of wire for the lower jaw, but for Sculpey you really want to use a thinner layer (even an inch thickness is too much), as it's heavy and it will also crack again if you ever cure/bake it.

    Sculpey is much much softer than Monster Clay. It looks like the weight of the clay is making it fall/tear over time. I would make sure that most of the sculpture is some other material, (like aluminum foil etc), and then layer the Sculpey over it. Think of it like a skeleton! The armature is the skeleton/muscles, and the clay is the skin.

    Thank you Sasha, I only built the armature with with wire like in the course, I didn’t contemplate the weight being different from Monster Clay’s so I’ll redo the armature and start over, thank you!
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