>>DON LANNING: Hey, this is Don Lanning.
Today, I'm going to show you some of my techniques
for sculpting a wide variety
of subject matter.
A lot of sculptures that I've worked with,
I learned so much by watching them.
Good morning, everybody.
This is Don Lanning for the Stan Winston School.
We're here to do something really simple.
In preparation for the eight-week course,
the live course that's coming up,
we're going to go ahead and we're going to make a clay board.
The reason why I wanted to do this with you is because it involves warm clay.
There is a potential that you might burn yourself.
I want to keep you safe as possible.
All of us are out here today to just give you an example of how to do this.
This is the 20 x 20 inch board
that we recommend that you get for the class.
You'll notice that it's much larger
than the board that I originally did the DVD lesson on.
There's a reason for that.
After you do your lesson
and do your sculpture,
I want you to be able to move beyond
and do your own thing and apply the lesson into some other venue
or some other technique
that's your own.
I want you to run on your own.
So, we've got room for that on this canvas.
As you're shopping for this board, you can go literally have one like this cut.
As you in Osh,
or Home Depot,
you're going to find these.
You're going to walk in and you're going to say, "Look,
there's these boards that are pre-made, precut.
They've got a nice beveled edge on them.
They're about $10 to $15."
You can get this
if this is what you want.
Okay?
It doesn't have to be a board like this.
What it does have to be is, it does have to be
larger than say 15 or 16 x 16.
It has to be a pretty large board.
I don't want you running out of space during the lesson.
Once again, it doesn't matter it's the round or the square,
but please get a large board.
At the end of the eight-week course,
you're going to have this in your home
and you're going to see all of this beautiful sculpture.
You're going to see evidence of the lessons but you're also going to have your own stuff,
boiling on the surface of this.
I want your family and friends to walk in the room and go, "What is that?"
Pretty neat.
Anyways, let me talk about ovens.
I always recommend a toaster oven.
Some people, I just worked for a fellow, and he's using a microwave.
He and I are running back and forth in tandem using a microwave to heat our clay.
I don't recommend that you use a microwave
to heat your clay.
It just changes the clay in a very subtle and very strange way.
It reminds me of Jeff Goldblum,
in The Fly.
You put your clay in the teleporter, it appears over here on the other side of the room
and there's just something different about the clay.
It's more crumbly,
cracky.
So, once again,
a toaster oven,
to just evenly heat up your clay.
Also, keep your clay warm as you're sculpting so that you have a resource to be able to
go over,
grab some warm clay
and not have any slow down.
That's what I recommend.
Stay away from the microwave.
Here's our 20 x 20 inch piece of board.
We're all set.
The only tools that you need for this because this is so simple, is just a couple of paint
sticks.
Have those nearby and have those handy.
I also have the serrated kidney
that's here,
just in case I need to clean up an edge of something of that nature.
But, the main thing is just a simple paint stick.
I'm going to go ahead and open the oven.
About 30 minutes ago,
what I did is, I cut up two blocks of Chavant medium clay
and I went ahead and I put them in this cookie tin.
I got this cookie tin for about two or three bucks.
And put the chopped up clay in there and then I warmed it at 275 for about 30 minutes.
I could have just put the big old blocks right in the cookie tin.
I tend to cut up the clay.
You don't even need to do that.
Just sit the blocks in there and every once in a while,
check on it so it doesn't burn
and go in with your pain stick and go ahead �
You'll notice that there's little blocks of clay that's still not melted.
Go ahead and move those around, gently,
and they'll go ahead
and start to melt out.
Now, this looks really good.
This has been sitting in there for about 30 minutes
and it's ready to go.
So, we're going to go right ahead.
Once again, you're going to be very careful and you're going to have some rags.
I'm going to come in and grab the dish.
Grab the tin, I mean.
I'm going to take this out.
I'm not going to go ahead and start pouring
right off.
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to
sit it down on the table.
It's very hot down here so
be sure you're not burning a tabletop.
I'm going to look at the consistency.
Yeah, that's great.
So, this looks like caramel or chocolate.
But, the main thing is I don't see any large chunks
rising up
so everything has been melted really nicely.
Good.
So, we're ready to go.
Once again, this is so easy, no fanfare, but I do want you to take your time,
measure your steps
so that you don't create an opportunity to burn yourself.
I'm going to go ahead and grab the edge.
Right there, in the center, I'm going to go ahead
and pour out a pool of clay.
Awesome.
No rushing, just relax.
Take a fresh paint stick.
So, here I have a clean one.
The ones that I was using before, they've got a gummed up end.
Take a nice clean paint stick
and, now, this is just like icing a cake, okay?
All you're going to do is you're going to come in,
you can take both hands
or one,
doesn't matter,
and just come in and lightly hit the top.
Lightly hit the top.
When I say, "lightly", what I'm saying there is don't push down
and hit the board.
You want to keep a thickness of this clay
on the board.
But this clay is so molten,
that it just kind of moves wherever I want it to move.
You're moving out from the center and you're moving towards the outlining edges of the
board.
Good.
You want to take your time here.
Don't worry about the clay cooling down.
It's not going to cool down too much.
Notice I'm not coming all the way out to the final edge of the board.
And, over here, I'm going to do the same.
Turn the board.
Here, I have a large mound of it right there.
I'm going to steady myself.
Go across the large mound in the center.
All the while, being careful,
not to hit the board
and leave myself a thickness of anywhere from
1/8" up to a 1/4"
thickness.
This is kind of like the surface of the moon.
You'll notice there's all kinds of
pops and dings and all that.
We don't care about that.
All we're doing is making sure that we get a nice
fairly even thickness
over the body of the board.
That's it.
That's really it.
Now, once this cools down a little bit,
we're going to go ahead and refine it.
Okay?
We will patch some of the little craters.
We will go ahead and process it with our metal kidney
or a spatula.
We will trowel it down so that it's very flat.
But, right now, you have achieved the total goal of what we came here to do today,
which is, hopefully, you haven't burnt yourself at all.
You've got your clay thickness on here.
You know that this is going to be a nice canvas for you to come out
and do the full lesson for the eight-weeks.
Let's say you're working in here
and you find that you want to come out here.
It's going to be an easy procedure
to come back in, heat some more clay of the clay that you purchased for the class,
and go ahead and fill out this area later.
But, right now,
we just want to get the bulk of the board prepared.
That's it.
We're going to let this cool down a little bit and we'll be right back.
Today, I'm going to show you some of my techniques
for sculpting a wide variety of subject matter.
We've had a few minutes to go ahead
and let this start to cool.
You'll see that the edges of the clay are starting to
change value a little bit.
Once again, at this stage,
quite honestly, you could go ahead and start the class just like this.
You're ready.
Okay?
But, some people like to get very prepared
and so I can go ahead and start using
my metal serrated kidney to go ahead and start troweling.
Look at the build up right there.
Okay?
I can go ahead
and put that into the areas that are not filled if I want to,
or, I can just use this as a tool to go ahead
and start troweling to plane down.
Here, once again,
I see a little bit of build up in here.
I can go around and start cleaning,
grab a little clay off the surface,
come to the area that hadn't been filled before
and go ahead and trowel in.
You're welcome to do that if you'd like.
Here, once again,
I'll just move easily across the top of the clay,
pick up a bit of clay on my tool,
place it where I have
a bald spot or a thin spot
or no clay,
and go ahead and bring that in.
Once again, here's your board.
As you go ahead
and you ready yourself to go ahead and start on our lesson together,
you're going to have this leaned up
and let me talk to you about that for a second.
I have something that I found at Michael's that I love.
I only have a small one.
I don't have the large one.
Once again,
you can use anything.
You don't have to use this.
I don't know if you guys have seen this before.
This comes in a very large size.
It's for about 10 bucks.
It's not listed in our materials,
because you don't have to have this.
You can simply put a bag of wed clay behind here.
You can prop it up.
You can do any number of things, put a weight here,
or rub some clay down here,
or use clamps.
Do whatever you need to get the thing up so that you can see it and you're comfortable.
Based on your comfort level of when you're sitting in your chair,
you want to reposition this
until you find a place where you say, "Yeah,
that's where I feel comfortable sculpting."
Then, you want to move accordingly.
Don't sweat any of that.
Once again, the thing that I also wanted to share with you today
is how easy this is
but, also,
it doesn't have to be a specific shape of board.
It does have to be a specific size,
the clay doesn't have to go on in a very precise way.
You can be very loose with this,
because in the lesson, we're going to tighten up
and we're going to get very specific.
This is a loose thing to do
and really easy.
Don't burn yourself.
If you burn yourself,
go to the hospital,
immediately,
or call me, and I'll take you to the hospital.
No,
if you do burn yourself, once again,
it's as simple as "Ooh!"
Wipe it on the table,
and it's done.
Now.
When we rejoin
ourselves, you're going to have
a heating place for your clay.
You're going to have a tray.
You're going to still have
two to three blocks of clay left.
You're going to have this board.
You're going to have something behind it so that you can lean it
in some way so that it greets the light that you have
and you're going to be ready to sculpt with me.
I'm so excited.
I've got to leave you with one other note.
We've got to cover a little bit about light.
We have some light source traveling in this way,
that's hitting me in the face right now, and coming across the board like this.
See all these beautiful little shadows?
Love that.
Your light, during the lesson, I would love it to be somewhere in here.
If I'm sculpting here, like this,
my light source
is going to be right here.
Not
directly above my head,
but right about here,
in relationship to the board.
I have a nice shadow
that falls down on to the board
so that I'm able to see
the things that I'm sculpting.
I also want you to think a little bit about the light in your home.
Once again,
if you have a light fixture in the ceiling,
you can make it work
by chasing/allowing your workspace to move around
to greet the light that's up in your ceiling.
As long as you have that light streaming down and
falling on the board this way and giving you shadows like that,
you're going to be fine.
You don't know it yet,
but I know it
from doing a few of these.
It's funny because I've had so many people come to me and say, "What's that?
That's bizarre.
It's hard to relate to."
Of course, a lot of these things that you're going to be doing and that we're going to
be doing on here,
these are made to be going on faces,
creatures,
plugged in.
These are like plug-ins in a computer program
where you're able to take all these techniques that you learn and that you do
and that you create on your own,
and you plug them into your future creatures
and your future characters.
A strange thing happens,
that I've got to tell you about.
You do this panel,
you do another one,
you do another one.
We're going to do scales, in the future.
We're going to do different kinds of contusions
from realistic to what-have-you.
We're going to have different categories.
If you have a few of these in your home,
you'll notice that people walk in and they say, "What is that?
It looks like an art piece.",
because it's in the form of a painting.
It's in the form of a canvas.
After lessons, I've had people steal these.
They're just gone.
You're like, "What happened to it?
What happened to the demonstration board?"
Anyways, the joy of this is at the end.
You're going to have this board,
but it's not just a board anymore.
It's a moment-by-moment map
of everything that we did in the class
and, then, what you found in the class that you liked
and you went on and did for yourself.
It's going to be much more than just a board with clay on it.
Anyways,
I'm so excited about the class.
I am going to close this now but I want to invite you all
to join me.
This is going to be a rich and deep experience.
I want you to come sign up.
I want you to spend those eight-weeks with me
because it's going to be a unique adventure.
I'm also going to be able to have a time
to go in-depth with you and really find
some of the magic that you have inside of yourself
and be able to start your path into a deeper understanding of speaking the language of
clay.
Once again, you guys, please click on
the link and look at the description
on the sign up page.
I invite you to go ahead and join me
for an awesome eight weeks.
I'll see you then.
This is Don Lanning, for the Stan Winston School.