Burrows & Badgers - getting back to sculpting!

I decided to tackle the ‘squirrel archer’ sculpt this week; he’s a lot smaller than the badger, so I figured it would be a good test of my rusty sculpting chops…

I started as usual with the armature. This one was a bit different, as I wanted him to be holding a bow and an arrow. A lot of sculptors would make the weapons separately, then attach them later, but I generally prefer them to be part of the armature.

So I used thin (.51mm) brass wire, and twisted two pieces together, leaving one end with a lot more length; those long bits would be bent back on themselves to form the bow armature.

The pose I chose would be uncastable in a single piece usually, but I was planning to se the squirrel’s big, bushy tail to sort that issue…

Next, I roughed in the body shape with some Greenstuff, and bent a piece of wire for the tail, which I attached while the Greenstuff was still soft.

Then I had a go at the head. I started with a small piece of cured putty on a wire as usual, then went through the normal process; adding blobs of putty for the main masses, blending them together, marking in details. But it was all going wrong, putty sliding all over the place and generally not behaving the way I wanted. So I had to scrap it and start over…

I came to the conclusion that I needed to start with a larger, better shaped cured putty armature, so that’s what I did. Then the usual blobs, blend, detail process, followed by adding ears, and tidying the fur. Sounds quick, but took about 3 hours in the end!

Next I used Brownstuff to cover the bow and arrow, smoothed into place, and a couple of details added, like the fletching.

I’d mixed up too much putty as usual, so I used the extra to start a quiver.

Then I started on the legs; I only needed to sculpt the front on one leg, as the other would be hidden by the tail. I did this exactly the same as I did for the badger, in the previous project entries.