How to Sculpt Fantasy Miniatures: Part 2, Sketching and Drawing out your miniature

In this part of the tutorial we take a look at how to begin making a miniature. This covers doing some drawing and possibly some research on body shapes. It is important that you do some sketches before you start working in clay. This way you get a solid feel and understanding for what you are trying to achieve.

Note: This lesson comes with a youtube video that shows you everything. You can see it at the bottom of the page. But I recommend you read through the lesson first.

Working with clay in three dimensions is a skill that takes practice and the only way you are going to get good at it is to practice it! But sketching things out will help you get much better, much faster.

So get your sketch pad and start drawing! If you don't have a sketch pad Amazon.com has plenty of them. Order one and until you get it just use any notebook paper you can find. Strathmore Drawing Paper Pads Size 11 x 14

We are beginning this miniature tutorial with some easy stuff and I am going to give you an easy template for making your first miniature drawing. This drawing is for a six inch miniature and it shows you a valuable rule of thumb.

A human being is approximately eight heads in height. That means you can draw a box and divide it into eight sections. This will help you get the proportions right.

Draw yourself a box just like the one shown here on the left. It is six inches high and 2 1/2 inches wide. Now draw a line right down the middle. This is the center line of your miniature. Now draw all your little boxes. Each box is 3/4 of an inch in height. This gives you your eight sections and the top section is the size of a human head.

Now start drawing in the human body by just using circles and oblong shapes. The head is one unit, the chest takes up two units, the pelvis is one unit, the thighs are two units, knees and calves one unit and the ankles/feet one unit. This is just a rough sketch to get the scale right. In the next step we will round it out a bit and make it look more human.

Now look over your drawing and flesh it out. Connect the oblongs and the circles so they are smooth. Try to capture the physique and musculature of a warrior. I have added a sword on his back.

When you have completed this stage you have done enough drawing to move on to doing some sculpting. Remember that the drawing you have is six inches in height and the first miniature you make is also six inches in height. This is so you can get a feel for modeling and sculpting.

If you want more practice drawing fantasy figures I have a totally free fantasy art school that has lessons and recommended books for you. It's a nice way to improve by working your way through the lessons.

This first section is just to give you a basic idea of a figure. Once you get good at basic figures you should experiment with lots of different poses. These different and dramatic poses will make a big difference in the attractiveness of your miniature. I will talk more about this in lessons coming up.

Continue with Sculpting fantasy miniatures tutorial Part 3

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Table of Contents for this tutorial

1. Miniature Home
2. Miniature Painting intro & overview
3. Painting Miniatures Tutorial start
4. The Paints
5. Preparing the Miniature for painting
6. Priming the Miniature
7. What to paint first
8. More Painting and the details
9. Close-up of the completed Warhorse
10. Adding texture to the base for realism
11. Tips and hints for painting miniatures
12. Diorama and Miniature supply Store
13. New Painting Miniature Tutorial: A Spartan Warrior
14. VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to paint miniatures
15. Miniature Paints and kits at Amazon
16. Ral Partha Miniatures
17. Links and info about manufacturers of miniatures
18. Understanding Miniature Scale
19. How to Make Foam Terrain for wargaming or dioramas
20. How to Cast Miniatures

Sculpting Fantasy Miniatures

NEW: How to sculpt fantasy miniatures

1. Part 1 - intro
2. Part 2 - Drawings
3. Part 3 - Making Wire Armatures
4. Part 4 - Your first miniature 6"
5. Part 5 - Make a 3" miniature
6. Part 6 - the musculature of the 3" miniature Viking Warrior
7. Part 7 - Our first Armor - we sculpt the viking helmet
8. Part 8 - Sculpting leather and chainmail
9. Part 9: Adding Belt, bracers and boots
10. Part 10:Painting the miniature
11. Part 11: 25mm Female Warrior
12. Part 12 : The basic shape of the mini
13. Part 13: Completing the body
14. Part 14: Adding the swords and doing detail
15. Part 15: Painting and finishing the miniature
16. Sculpting Fantasy Miniatures Video Tutorials
17. Sculpting miniatures store- all the supplies you need.
18. Sculpting tips
19. Sculpt a Dwarf
20. Sculpt a Treasure Chest

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