The Making of an Angel Sculpture

Here is a video of still pictures taken of the process of sculpting an angel. She is about 3 feet tall. I didn't think to start taking pictures till I started sculpting, so it doesn't show the making of the armature. The armature was 1/4 inch steel rods welded together and covered with newspaper, aluminum foil and tape. I had to do some modifying of the armature, which you will see in the video. I used the foil over the paper so that when I was done I wouldn't be picking pieces of paper off my oil based clay. I was picking pieces of foil instead. Use thick foil if you do this. It wasn't bad though, not as bad as the paper alone would have been.

Some thoughts on sculpting. To be precise when sculpting the human form it's best to sculpt it nude. Get everything right. The thing is, you aren't going to actually add clothing. You are going to add folds and wrinkles where they lay on the body, and if the body isn't right, your clothes are going to look like they are laying on a deformed body. I added nipples, even though I knew they wouldn't show when finished. They were reference points. It's hard to judge how and where something should be round with no reference point on it. Some people use lines. I've tried that and my lines just get demolished. I fail to see how a lump of clay is erotic anyway. So if you are easily offended by bare clay, you might not want to watch this video. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GlU18gEdMI&feature=plcp