Sculpting Skye again: wings

Process of making wings for grown-up version of Skyefigure.

Post about sculpting the figure's head is here, and post about sculpting the rest of the body is here. All posts relevant to making Skye and the three other figures in her set can be found in this tag.

Starting with two pieces of 1mm aluminum wire, each bent into the rough shape of a wing's skeletal structure, and pieces of foil for the flight feathers. I used masking tape for the feathers back when I made juvie Skyefigure, but since that had some unexpected setbacks, I'm using just foil this time. Another difference is that I'm making the primaries separately, to arrange them more individually, especially towards the tips of the wings. I still trimmed them a bit after this photo to be the right shape and size.

Here's a good guide for the terms for different kinds of feathers on a bird's wing that I'll use in the post without much more explanation.

Attaching the foil to the wires with clay and arranging the primaries (easier said than done, those things kept wanting to slide out of place until I finally got them into the oven). Then after baking, covering the feathers with a sheet of clay on each side. The secondaries for the right wing didn't work out at this stage, so I left them out so they're not in the way of working on the primaries, and will add them later.

The right wing is folded more closed, while the left wing is extended, in the pose I want the figure to be in. Because Skye is a JW raptor with pronated wrists, her wings can get a bit wonky especially when folded, so the right one will need some special care.

I expected I might not be able to fit all of the primaries I'd made, but I only had to leave out one in each wing. (Skye as I draw her has ten primaries and ten secondaries when I remember to pay attention to that.)

Shaping and cutting the clay on the wings little by little, using the small craft blade and sewing pin, mostly. Patting the clay really thin brought out the edges of the foil feathers as guidelines, and I'm mostly following those for the lines between feathers.

Though I initially covered the whole wing with the same sheet of clay, I cut the clay between the primaries near the tip of the wing, and added clay to any parts of those feathers that had been against the other foil feathers, so they're covered all over. I shaped them to be a bit curved.

After baking the wings again, I started on the greater coverts. It was a mix of techniques, mostly consisting of flattening vaguely teardrop-shaped beans onto the wing so they overlap, and applying a thin sheet of clay that I cut and carved into multiple feathers. After I was happy with the shape of the new feathers, I drew details on them with the sharp end of the sewing pin, like I'd done for the flight feathers, too.

As I baked the left wing's dorsal coverts, I noticed that leaning the wing's weight on the curved primaries during the bake straightened them a bit, but that they also stay pretty bendable even after baking, so I was able to easily get them back into shape. On all subsequent bakes I had the wing ventral side up, and turns out it's still light enough to not flatten any of the drawn details.

I made the right wing's secondaries separately to attach after baking.

I added dorsal coverts to the primaries and ventral coverts to the secondaries before combining the wing parts, as these sides will overlap closely enough that I won't be able to do much to these surfaces afterwards. One of the primary coverts is from a batch of prebaked feathers I originally made for juvie Skyefigure.

The sheet of secondaries I made for the right wing has one feather fewer than the left wing's secondaries, because I wanted to make the S1 feather at the middle of the wing separately, to add to this wing looking a bit strange. The wrist is in a position that for the animal that wings are optimized for would be anatomically impossible, so some feathers are pushed out of their proper places and pointing in odd directions. I put a piece of foil inside that feather, but not all the way to the tip, so it stays more flexible.

Secondaries attached. I also started on the marginal secondary coverts on the ventral side as some of them go under the primaries.

For fingers, I attached foil rolled into sticks to the wings and covered them with clay. The wires weren't quite long enough for the middle fingers, so they each got a foil stick extension, too. The hands took several bakes, to avoid squishing one finger when working on another.

I decided to go with polymer clay for the finger claws this time. Epoxy putty, which I used for juvie Skye's claws, is stronger and generally more durable, but as a hard material it's probably not best suited for relatively thin, pointy things. We'll see how these claws survive.

I also utilized one of the disembodied fingers I'd made for juvie Skyefigure before deciding to sculpt the first and third finger directly onto the hand like above (there are three fingers left because I used one for Singer). I used it for the right hand's third finger, and sculpted a claw onto it while it was still separate and attached the finger when the rest of the hand was mostly done. Because of the right wing's pose this felt like it worked better for the outermost finger.

Hands done, now the rest of the feathers.

Some of the marginal coverts are flattened clayballs arranged individually, some are a thin sheet of clay laid over some foil padding for a smoother surface, textured with the sewing pin and the feather outline stamp made out of a plastic straw (more about my sculpting tools in the post about sculpting the head). This is Skye's adult plumage, so apart from pronated-wrist-related messiness, I want her to look less ruffled than in her juvenile plumage.

I put both wings in the oven for a full hour once they were done, to be sure all the clay in them is baked.

Then, time to attach the wings to the body! I made a loop at the end of the wing's wire about where the shoulder would be, put the wire attached to the body through that, and twisted it around the wing wire. It's not very pretty, but it just needs to hold the wing in place. The left wing that's more open needed two additional supports of jewelry wire for the elbow to stay high enough.

I added body feathers where I think I'll have better access before building the rest of the wings, and baked that.

She got a second bake on her back again, to set the right wing in the correct position better. While the wires hold it up, I want the shoulder closer to the body and the hand farther away from it than I could get the wing to stay with just the wires. I added clay around the shoulder with the figure upside down, letting gravity keep the wing in the right position while the clay was still soft. The foil supports under the wings during the bake weren't necessary, the wings aren't actually touching them, but I felt like I should put something under them to catch them just in case.

Sculpting tertiary feathers on the upper arm. They're a sheet of foil with a thin coating of clay on both sides, where I already drew feather details to both sides before attaching it.

I also added one more secondary feather at the elbow, and it's also from the aforementioned prebaked feather batch. It ended up looking a bit messy, though, so I still tweaked it later.

On the underside there's a bit more foil filler, secured with another thin sheet of clay, to which I stuck one by one feathers I'd detailed before attaching them, until it looked like they fill the space they should. This is mostly armpit fluff. The upper arm still needs feathering, and the dorsal side of the wing does, too, but this is the least accessible spots covered.

Then the left wing. I filled in the feathers along the side that would be harder to reach later.

And then filled in the underside of the upper arm on this side, too.

That's about it for things directly related to wingmaking. More on sculpting the rest of the feathers around the wings can be found in the post about sculpting the body.