 Hi there! It's DJB and in this video, I'm going to be talking about the different kinds of clay that you can use for your projects. I have been a model horse customizer for two and a half years and in the recent, like, probably one and a half, I've been really avid in the sculpting side of things. Now, when it comes to sculpting and starting out and sculpting, it's really hard to know what kind of products to use, what kind of clays to use. As there's a lot on the market and I get these questions a lot. What product can I use to sculpt my model horse? What product can I use to make an original sculpture? So there's a lot of different variables in the different kinds of products that you can use and I'm going to go over some of those main products today. The first and most common kind of clay that you're going to find on the market is an air-hardening clay. This is common in your, like, normal craft stores, such as Michaels or Hobby Lobby, or if you're a beginner you may think, oh, an air-hardening clay. That's really, like, what I'm looking for. That means I don't have to put it in the oven and it will just harden an air cure by itself. Now, these are fine for, you know, art projects or for kids' crafts or, you know, really basic simple things, but these clays are not of a high quality. These are crafting hobby clays. So if you're getting into the professional realm of things and you're making really awesome, unique sculptures or if you're doing model horses, you don't want to use this kind of clay. It's not toxic to you. This one is claiming that it will not shrink, it resists crumbling and clothing stains. I have used this clay before in a couple instances and I know that when it cured, cracked a lot. And that's the problem with air-drying clay is that they do actually shrink and crack quite a bit and they're quite a brittle consistency. So this isn't, like, completely unheard of to use. I just don't find it as a very high quality product. It's definitely, you can get better clays that will work better for you. A rule of thumb for all clays is that if you're using a clay like this, you're gonna want to use wire armature in your sculpture so that it doesn't completely crumble and fall apart. This stuff by itself is not strong enough to hold a whole sculpture up on a couple legs or whatever you're making. So you want to definitely use armatures when you're using this kind of a clay. A lot of people asking for model horse specifics, can I use an air-dry clay? I would say no just because this is gonna be so brittle and I don't know the longevity of this kind of clay. So the kind of clay that I recommend most for model horse customizing or just general sculpture, original sculpture work in general, repairs around your house, model making, crafting of any kind, this is the best kind of clay you can get. So that is a, not necessarily a brand, but the type of clay which is two-part resin epoxy clay. So this particular one is in fact epoxy sculpt. You can get other brands as well such as Magic Sculpt and it's totally personal preference on which brand you would prefer. For a very long time I sculpted with epoxy and I liked how it worked and I would recommend it to anyone that's starting out 100% but I recently did switch to Magic Sculpt and I just like the consistency and the properties of the clay a little bit more. It's a little harder to find than epoxy but it works in the same way. Receive the same outcome. It's easier to find this stuff but I find this stuff easier to work with but that's totally personal preference. I've heard people try this and they say I hate it and I'll only use epoxy. But the premise of this clay, I have a full video actually on epoxy sculpt and I'm gonna be making some about Magic Sculpt but the premise is that they are two-part epoxy based. Epoxy it's saying part A and part B and what you have to do is mix equal portions of both the clays together and then they create a chemical reaction. You have up to an hour or so working time before it starts to cure. So when you first start sculpting with it it's going to be really soft and sticky as you keep working with it and that hour passes it's going to start to get more firm. You can still imprint details but you're not going to get that mold ability as it cures more and then it fully cures overnight in 24 hours. There's no shrinkage involved. There's no cracking crumbling. It's not brittle at all. It's very strong and durable. You can sand it. You can drill it. It's waterproof so it like pretty much is the best thing since sliced bread. I love this kind of clay. It takes some learning to get used to how to to use it and mold with it sculpt with it. The biggest thing that I've found is that you definitely need to sculpt with water or some kind of solution to smooth it out. So you do your original sculpture and then you're going to want to take water or rubbing alcohol. You can use isopropyl. The stronger the more effective it's going to be. So usually the 70% range is okay. If you go to the 90% isopropyls it's quite strong and it will really dilute out your your clay and then can sometimes make it too mushy. But if you're sculpting in general you want to smooth out with your fingers and then you can run a brush over your work with some isopropyl or water. I love using this. This is what I use for all of my customs. It's a little bit smelly. It has a bit of a smell. I know manuscripts isn't as bad as epoxy. Epoxy has a pretty strong smell. They do recommend you wear gloves when using it just because your skin can develop an allergy. I don't personally use gloves but I find that the direct physical contact to the clay is more important for my sculpting process. If I start developing an allergy I will 100% use gloves. It just cleans up with soap and water. It can get a little bit messy. If you're touching things when the clay is on your hands I have to keep a little scrub brush in my bathroom to wash off my hands when I'm done. But I would 100% recommend that for your original sculpture or your doll making or your repair work because this kind of clay is pretty much the best you can get. Now another really common type of clay that I also like using, polymer clay. So polymer clay is a little bit different in that it's an oven baked clay. This is really commonly used in miniatures, doll making, original sculpture as well because this clay never dries. So you basically get it in your container. It comes malleable and it will always remain malleable for the duration you have the clay and not until you bake it does it cure. So this gives you a lot longer of a working time so you can create your whole armature, you can create your whole sculpture and you can keep working on it for a couple months at a time and then when you're finally done with it you can bake it. And it's the same kind of properties as epoxy. You have a whole detail. Drillable, sandable and pretty solid and how it remains. I do find it a little bit brittle at times. It's definitely not the strongest type of clay. The epoxy is definitely stronger and will hold up longer. There's lots of different variations of what you can get. So like this is the Super Sculpty in firm and this is just Super Sculpty. I hate the firm. I can't get it warm enough to sculpt anything with it but the Super Sculpty is one of my favorites. It's a fleshy color so that's not amazing but it works. You can also go into you know your local craft store. You'll see little containers of all of these guys. These clays come in a bunch of different colors so you can entirely sculpt your creation in one color and it will cure and dry in that color. So you never technically have to paint what you're sculpting if you get a bunch of these colors. If that's what you're into doing like little miniature food or little miniature characters and you don't want to have to paint all of them you can get the color of the polymer that you're looking for and it will bake in that color. So I have a whole bunch of the colors and I also just use basic grays and nudes. These work really well in the model horse world if you want to sculpt like a crazy tail it works to make a really quick base out of these. I make all of my medallion bases out of this clay and then I can sculpt with epoxy over top so you can mix mediums in that sense. For model horses you can't sculpt on your model horse because if you put your briar in the oven it will melt. So you can sculpt a tail on a wire armature and then bake it in the oven. So even for my original sculpture that I started I made a wire armature. I covered that wire armature in polymer so I could play with the shape. So I played with the shape for a couple of weeks and then I baked it and now I'm filling out the rest of the sculpture with epoxy and magic sculpt as a final detailed original model kind of piece. The only thing is when you're working with this stuff you're going to need to hollow it out. You can't bake giant huge chunks of it like if you were to mix a whole bunch of epoxy and just let it dry it would cure 100% even the middle. If you were to do that with this stuff it wouldn't bake all the way through so you have to kind of hollow out your really big sculptures with aluminum foil or wire. Anything that can go in the oven you can't use plastic or paper or anything to stuff your sculpture that could light on fire. Now the final type of clay that I have for you are oil based clays. So you may have heard of these such as monster sculpts. So I have a thing of monster sculpt here. You can actually microwave this stuff in a microwave safe container and it will turn to like a liquid. You can pour mold into things. You can heat it up with your hands you can heat it up a little bit in the microwave so it gets malleable when it's warm. Kind of the same as polymer the more you play with it the more soft it gets. This stuff is the same. Basically what this clay is is that it never cures. So it stays in its malleable consistency no matter what. So when you're heating it up and you're sculpting it with your hands it's going to get quite warm and malleable but then as it cools it's going to get quite hard. So it's going to hold its sculptural form but you still could pick out details or remove parts of the sculpture. Add to the sculpture months even years after because it never will cure. What is the purpose of this? This is more so like I said professional artwork. They're casting purposes. So a lot of the top dog professional artists in model horses and in sculpture will use an oil-based clay. And then the idea behind that is that the sculpture remains tactile and you can work on it for a very long time and then once it's finished generally you have to make a cast of that sculpture so you have to mold the sculpture in silicone inject it with resin or some form of plastic to create a waste mold and then you make that waste mold pretty and then you make your final mold. So the reason I have this is for the purpose of medallions. I want to try using this for medallions instead because I've heard it's really good. So the premise is that you would sculpt with this for your medallion cast your medallion but then your original sculpture is ruined once you make that first cast because it won't come clean out of the mold. This is reusable you can use it a bunch of time you can make a bunch of different sculptures with it but it never cures and that's more for the advanced artist but I thought I would still go over that because it still is a brand of clay that you can come across. It's kind of similar to plaster scene. Plaster scene never cures but anything oil based it's not curable it's a working medium that you work with over and over to create sculpture that you plan on casting. So I like all of these clays equally and they all have their equal purposes like I said mixing mediums is really fun to do. I like using other basic clay as a base for my work. You can get this stuff in small containers so that you can try it out before you go by the huge container. You can just go and buy one color of like Fimo Soft to try to play with polymer clay and see if you like it. You can get tests of this stuff too without buying the giant huge thing and for the most part I would say avoid simple basic air dry clay. They're not very good they don't hold up they don't last. So I hope that this helped clear some of the air. I get a lot of questions about this and it's hard to know what exactly to get in the beginning for sure. So I thought I would go over this and make a really easy to follow guide on what to you should be looking for and what clay suits you best. So thank you so much for watching. Please like this video subscribe to my channel and watch out for weekly Wednesday uploads. Although I'm a model horse channel I'm really enjoying doing general art videos as well and helping people in other hobbies and crafts find their niche and the tools that can help them achieve their goals. So thank you so much for watching. This has been DJB and happy sculpting.