TRANSLUCENT CLAY & MIXING DIFFERENT BRANDS OF CLAY
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Translucent Clay!
When I first heard about it, I thought it was quite useless. It's basically clay with no colour?? What the heck can you do with this?
Turns out, there's A LOT.
Translucent clay is just what it is - translucent! In the photo above, it shows that raw translucent clay can be on the beige side, or white. But once baked, it looks quite different and you can actually see through it a little.
If you read my post about polymer clay, you will know that I primarily use Premo and Du-kit clay. It's the same for translucent clay. But different brands always have their differences, so here's how these two look like raw and baked 😊
Note colour difference!
In general, translucent clay will become a tad bit darker when baked too - so I have to keep that in mind when I mix colours with it. Because of this, it's important to bake a test piece and see if the colour after baking will be accurate!
Especially Premo's translucent, since there's a yellowish tint to it.
Here you can see the tanslucency of both brands. Premo's is definitely much better, but it becomes much darker and the tint is more obvious after baking!
I prefer premo translucent though, it just live up to its name of being translucent better.
Translucent clay, when mixed with coloured clay, will not change the colour of the clay. It might be a bit darker, but that's about it.
TRANSLUCENT CLAY FOR TRANSLUCENT THINGS
You might be wondering in what circumstances would translucent be useful for. One of the most obvious usage would be if the item you're making is translucent!
It's not easy to see if something you want to make is translucent or not, so one of the easiest way is to ask yourself:
"Is there water content in that item?"
Usually items that has water content, like cherries, strawberries, vegetables, rice, eyes, skin etc would look a little "translucent"! Especially food items, which tends to have water content.
The translucent clay will make your item just a tad bit natural and realistic, trust me!
Remember to put more translucent than colours though, or just do lots of test piece 😀
This is how normal coloured clays looks like with translucent clay, raw and baked respectively. (Baked polymer clay becomes matte!)
Dukit translucent, as expected, takes a lot more for the translucency to be obvious. (Even in the 1:3 ratio, it's still not as obvious as I would like)
Notice how the colour changes for the 1:3 ratio!
For Premo translucent, it takes lesser "effort" for the translucency to be obvious 😊
Here's the baked clay being stacked closed to each other to see the difference!
MOONING
One of the cons of using too much translucent clay (or by itself) is that there might be some "white spots" on the baked piece. In this example, it's a line.
This phenomenon is called mooning, and unfortunately, no one really knows how it forms and how to prevent it from happening.. Some people said that it's the way you mix clay, the temperature of the oven, and all sorts of thing.
What I find consistent in preventing it from happening is unfortunately, using less of it, or use just enough. Also, if the item is smaller, it's less obvious 🙃 I guess I'm glad I like to make miniatures? 😀
Some people use translucent clay to just sculpt and paint it after, basically not using it for its intended purpose. Whatever works I suppose! For people who paint on sculptures, it's just easier to have one colour ("colour" in this case) and use it for the base for everything haha.
Dukit translucent has a higher chance and tendency to moon A LOT. It's another reason why I don't really use it ahaha. This is why experimenting with different brands is important!
MY SKIN COLOUR RECIPE
I'm really excited to share this, as I spent a lot of time to try to find the perfect skin tone many months ago! If you like how my figurine's skin looks like, this is how I do it (and you can save the trouble of experimenting 😆)
I use Dukit flesh colour as my base. These are raw clay, and I'm not sure if you can see it here, even the raw clay has a lot of mooning in it (which usually means it'd be more obvious when it's baked)
This flesh colour is probably a few colours pre-mixed together, with lots of translucent clay to give that natural look. Which is done correctly, since us humans is basically consist of about 75% water right?
But the mooning totally ruins the whole thing and that really sucks especially if you've already spent lots of time on it 😦
I "fixed" it by adding white clay, because remember how translucent clay makes it darker anyway? White colour would counter that! 😀 It works wonderfully, and the mooning isn't that obvious, but I still get that nice translucency look 😍
I've been using this "recipe" for the longest time, and it saved me a lot of time too. If I need a darker tone, I'll just add brown instead of white - but I'll try to keep it to 1/32 as it seems to be the perfect amount.
If you're curious how to even measure 1/32 of clay, another article will be up soon to explain how I mix colours 😊
If you're unsure how it looks like and if it even works, here's a comparison!
The head on the left is one of my old "failed" test piece, and it's just polymer clay colours mixed together. (I might have put a tiny bit of translucent clay as it still has that porcelain translucent look, but it was obviously not enough)
Dukit flesh colour to me was the perfect shade too, and I'd also save myself the trouble of mixing all the colours myself, so yes it's definitely much convenient 😀
If you don't have Dukit clay (I know how hard it is to find, and I buy them online in bulk), you can give Premo's flesh colour a try too! It might just work as well 😊 Just remember that flesh/skin colour consist of translucent clay, and if you're having problem with the mooning, try adding some white 😀
GETTING A SOFT YET WORKABLE CLAY WITH TRANSLUCENT CLAY
Remember how I talk about the Sculpey III and how soft and unworkable it is?
Sometimes I really want to have a soft clay so I can mold from the clay directly, instead of adding clay on and blending it (which is usually how I do it). But Sculpey clay just makes it impossible, and Premo is a tad too hard for me to do that. Don't get me wrong, Premo/Dukit clay being hard is preferred to sculpt with tools as it retains its intended structure better.
But sometimes, I do wish polymer clay could have the texture of ceramic clay, which just seems so easy on the hands and yet retains its structure so well??
DISCLAIMER: I've never tried ceramic clay before, but from the way I see people tend to use it, it just seemed that way. I MIGHT BE WRONG, but nonetheless I still want that kind of texture.
And I think I may have found the closest thing to it 😆
To recap and for comparison sake, this is how Sculpey III on its own looks like when I fiddle with it. Notice how the clay just tears off easily, almost like air dry clay!
This is how it looks like with premo translucent clay added, in a 1:1 ratio!
Mixing different brands together might result in a slightly different texture, whereby the two clay's pros and cons might just work out when mixed together!
In this case, the mixed clay is still soft on the hands and malleable, yet it doesn't distort easily, and the colour doesn't change (a lot) since it's mixed with Premo translucent instead of other colours!
You can definitely do this if you did not mix enough clay for a certain colour too - just add translucent clay and the amount of clay can easily become twice as much! 😊
This is how it looks like to pinch and make "legs" with just the mixed clay itself - no blending of clay parts separately (which is what most people do with polymer clay)
I didn't really smooth it out properly, but you can see how I am able to hold the clay with my left hand without distorting the clay!! 😍
Also, remember how premo clay is quite sturdy after baking? I'm glad that it stays that way for mixed clay after baking too! It somehow worked so well, inheriting all the good things instead of the "bad" ones 😆
Compared to this which is the Sculpey III by itself, everywhere I touch would "press" the clay, even the hand that's just supporting the clay???
Halfway through I also accidentally touched one of the made legs and it just moved.....when I didn't want it to (and I wasn't even trying to move it 😅)
It can also blend well if desired, and the structure stayyyyyyyys! 😍
Just to show how normal Premo clay is like when trying to blend. It just takes more effort, less smooth edges, and sometimes just easier to use tools!
I didn't have white sculpey clay to use as example since I'm totally out, but usually I mix it with white instead of black, and it just makes such a nice base for certain things like this corgi pen rest! Even the rabbit above was made with this mixed clay for the body 😊
I'm still finding my own style for animals, and I've always wanted to try this kind of method (pinching clay to make legs/head etc) so finding this mixture was really lucky for me, and I can't wait to fiddle with it more to see what I can come up with!
That's all I have for translucent clay - there's basically TWO MAJOR "secret" right in this post that I will never share with anyone else 😆 But of course you, my supporters will know everything hurhurhur ❤
As usual, let me know if you have any questions about translucent clay that I might have missed out, and I will update this post accordingly! 😊