Tutorial what to do with the dried greenstuff leftovers

When your sculpting a project most of the times there will be some Greenstuff leftovers. If its still fresh and you can sculpt something with it you can do plenty of things, little spikes, skulls, mushrooms, purity seals or scrolls etc.

But what to do when its not moldable anymore? Do you trash away the dried bits of Greenstuff?

I tend to use those for something else and again there are lots of things you can do with them, heres one.

Sharp rocks

Not much of a tutorial and more just an idea for you guys.

Greenstuff when dried is very easy to cut so bring in your sharp blades.

1- Super glue or PVA glue

2- Blade

3- Dried bits of Greenstuff

Cut random sizes and shapes, make sure they look very sharp.

Glue the bigger stones first and then fill the gaps with the smaller ones.

Job done.

So why not just use cork? Apart from being expensive and your using free bits of Greenstuff that you normally throw away, the look is very different since cork looks like a less sharp type of rock. You will also struggle to get the fine sharp tips on cork.

Also take this opportunity to experiment, instead of rocks you can cut spear heads, spiked armour and all sorts of sharp things for your models. Again have fun.

Tutorial Sculpting Texture

This tutorial will be about achieving some interesting textures that can be applied to many different subjects. Again it will be a really simple tutorial and easy to follow so that anyone can achieve the results fast with no hassle regardless of experience in sculpting.

The subject will be some kind of swamp tree with a very mossy and rough texture on the bark, so bring in your greenstuff and lets get this project done.

Sculpting rough textures

You will need the following.

1. Wire cutter
2. Cheap super glue
3. Old toothbrush 
4. Greenstuff
5. Paper clips
6. Needle
7. A base for your little tree branch, I used a coin

All sorted so lets play with some paperclips now.

Bend and cut the clips to create the desired shape for our small tree, depending on how big and complex you want the tree you will need more or less paper clips\wires. Since my aim for this tutorial is to display the texture work I just made a really small young tree.

Lets base it now so we can have a good sturdy surface to work on.

Mix just a little bit of Greenstuff...

Apply a little ball to the coin and use the rest to do some roots, this is really rough stuff so use your fingers and do not worry to much if your fingermarks are printed on the roots.

Once your happy with the roots and with the Greenstuff still fresh apply Superglue to join the tree to the base. The bound created by the mix of fresh Greenstuff and Superglue is VERY strong. Let the glue dry before going for the next step.

Mix more Greenstuff  and break it in small manageable blobs, these will be your tree curves.

Bit by bit start bulking your tree, as you can notice if you just work one blob at the time you will have more control on the final shape. Note that all of this is just sculpted using your fingers so no need for other tools, we want a rough finish since its a tree after all.

Horrible results so far, hey? Do not despair and lets have fun now.

Bring in your secret weapon the mighty toothbrush and poke the Greenstuff! Experiment here, you will see that small jabs will create less deep indentations and vice versa. This picture displays just 2 pokes, one deep and a more subtle one.

Death by 100 pokes and your texture is almost done. Lets just add the final touch.

To make the final texture more eye catching use a fine needle and poke the putty again, this time some deep holes. Remember less is more so do not create to many holes.

All done! Simple and easy! You can make a small tree like this in 1 hour. After that you can sculpt more stuff into it like mushrooms, lianas etc but thats for another day. Actually I did a small mushroom tut here Mushi tutorial

So I hope you enjoyed this texture, it has many applications, you can use it to create soil, ugly tree bark or even a strange creature rough skin! Have fun and share your results and ideas.

Some examples of how I use this texture.

Yoda tree

Soil for bases

Movement trays

Cheers.

Tutorial Sculpting Alien Skin

Back in the day that Buglands site was online I had a few sculpting tutorials. After my latest failed attempt to retrieve Buglands back it seems all is gone forever. Many people ask me tips for sculpting with Greenstuff so I decided to pick some of the old tutorials highlights and upload them on to this blog.

Sculpting Alien Skin ( Greenstuff Tutorial)

Introduction 

This small sculpting tutorial will be showcasing some tips on how to create a very simple alien skin texture that can be used in various projects, from chaos creatures, lizardmen to Tyranids.

Step 1 ( things you will need) (pic1)

1- Sculpting tool

2- Hobby knife ( cutter)

3- Miniature or structure to apply textured skin

4- Toothpick

5- Modeling putty (green stuff)

6- Water

7- Flat surface

Patience 

Step 2 (handling green stuff)

- Cut a bit of green stuff (GS) and mix it, more yellow is better for detail work but it takes more time to cure and is also extremely sticky, more blue has the opposite effect. 

- In a flat area stretch, roll the GS until you reach the desired shape and size (pic2)

- Apply it directly on the miniature (I created a fimo swirly structure)

- Use the toothpick and sculpting tool to handle the GS, both should be dipped in water to avoid GS sticky properties (pic3)

Step 3 ( Texturing)

- Reshape the GS to fill the interior structure or miniature and cut the excess (pic4)

- With sculpting tool carve some parallel lines gently on GS (pic5)

- Finally push it towards previous GS module in order to create space for next one (pic6)

Conclusion

Now that you have done the first module of the skin you just need to repeat the same steps several times in order to cover all the desired surface. The reason why I choose to make the skin in small modules and not all at once is due to the fact you will have more control over the skin sculpting and also makes the texture itself much more interesting. I hope these tips will help you all on your future sculpting projects.

Final result.

Have fun Greenstuffing.