Sculpting Gandalf

This is a sculpt of Gandalf the Grey I did. It starts quite far in, I didn't take early photos as with the Stubbs sculpt. Anyway, here is Gandalf's basic form:

This is the beginning... sort of. What I did up until this point was manipulation of basic shapes. Combining them to get to this point.

A close up. I made the beard by attaching long strands of sculpy that were blended in together. The hat; a combination of a cone shape and a flat circle with a hole in the middle.

Side view. You will notice I used a base to make him more stable as I shaped him. This stayed as part of the final sculpt, but be sure not to use plastic! Something that is oven bake safe.

Again as with Stubbs, there is much shaping and attention to detail. It sometimes gets tedious and back aggravating, but the end result is always worth the pain.

And now the staff was added. I used an actual shard of amethyst that I had from a crystal growing kit. The staff was baked separately, and was be baked again when the sculpture was finalized.