Fins and Scales

Many wonderful artists are making their fins out of products like Fantasy Film so I decided to try a different approach.

I will be using Translucent Liquid Sculpy for this so I can put the entire piece in the oven as often as I want.
It will take the heat and remain rather transparent and flexible
Squeeze out a puddle of TLS on a sheet of foil.

 Shape and thin it out with a brush or your finger. this is thicker down the middle so I have more to insert into the clay figure.

 Cure with the heat gun or in the oven.

 Peel it off the tinfoil.

 A slit is made in the lower torso (tail?) to insert the side fins. The sheet I made is cut down the center so I have two fins roughly the same size and shape.

 They are inserted into the side slits and the clay is fused back over the fins. You can see the clay is slightly translucent (see my finger tips behind the fin)

 The tail starts with a number of wires taped down to some foil. These will insert into the tubes sticking out the end of her tail. A layer of TLC is brushed over the wires and cured. The tape holds the wires down so the tail does not get too thick. Once the first part is cured, the tape comes off and the rest of the tail is done.

The tail is shaped.

To make scales, I have taken some brass sheeting and ground out two different sized semicircles with my Dremel Tool.

The brass scale tools are pressed into the raw clay to make deep scales.I am making them deep to hold more color before I cure them. The body of the tail is all large scales. the small scales are found at the base of the tail fin and along the side fins (these are shaped to match my Koi in the pond)
Next time we will look at how I colored these and finished the scales before curing.
Thanks for looking, have a great day!
Mark