Trying out sculpting

I don't do sculpting much. For some reason it's a pretty intimidating artform for me, and my experiences with it don't extend much past having a lump of clay put in front of me at school and being told to make something out of it without knowing anything about how to do so - that may very well be the reason, actually. But I'm working with a 3D canvas in painting dinosaur figurines already, so I guess this is a logical next step. And I'm quite happy with the results so far!

For starters I decided to do something about the cuptopper Blue not having sickle claws, and for starters of that, I just chopped the non-sickled middle toes off with a box cutter. I thought about detaching the figure from the base for this, but it's glued on quite firmly and I wanted to get on with the sculpting, so I just slid a piece of thin cardboard under the toes to avoid scratching the base's surface much.

The operation was a success!

...And then I did my best to make tiny raptor toes with tiny raptor claws out of epoxy putty (Apoxie specifically, for anyone curious). I don't really have any sculpting tools, but I had tooth picks, an old brush, and water, and after having the putty cure for a day, we have this:

Still needs painting, and I'm planning on painting this figure into a different raptor, but this was probably better to do first. They're... quite nice? I can actually make something like that??

And then I let my newfound power go to my head (or just had to use up the putty I'd already mixed that didn't go into the sickle claws), and put some add-ons to a couple of other figures, too:

The little Sinornithosaurus whose wing feathers are growing out of the wrong finger, it seems, got a bit of padding on the back of the hand so the third finger is covered on the outside of the wing. The wings are kind of scrawny, but as with the mini Velociraptor from this set, this raptor can be a baby and the feathers still natal down, so that's not a problem to me. I put a bit more fluff on the face, though, so it's not a case of "fully feathered but with a totally bald face", which a hatchling might very well have, but, since I can change it I might as well. The grey patches are the putty, and I'll paint this figure, too.

Oh, how the turntables (speaking of the Velociraptor mini, since I also painted the small Indoraptor's claws today)

And Blue finally got her crooked feet fixed (I hope). They're twisted enough I don't think hot water would help there, and the removable "shoes" wedged under where her feet are tilted off the ground were a bit of a temporary measure. I'm still pretty proud of myself for them being something three-dimensional I made from scratch, but I also just didn't have anything to make something more seamless out of. Now she's got Apoxie molded under her feet to give them an even surface, and she's standing just fine. The grey putty blends in pretty well already, but I may paint her feet to make it even more inconspicuous. I saved her scan-code sticker, too, to stick it back on later.

Update: Blue's feet are painted, and here's a bit clearer view of them.