Hi, Rey Bustos back with you.
Now that you’ve done all these really, really pretty hard things.
I was going to say it gets easier but it doesn’t.
We’re going to be doing the scapulae, which are pretty tricky.
They’re pretty hard.
Watch my little helpful hints.
We’re going to be doing the clavicles, the arms, and the hands.
As we did the right foot, we’re going to be doing a real right hand.
It’s going to be this nice, beautiful floating right hand.
I’m going to show how to do that.
Let’s get to it.

Okay, in this session what we’re going to be doing is basically finishing everything
up except for the skull, and there is a reason why.
The skull is kind of tricky to do and make.
It doesn’t matter how professional you are.
The skull is something that you have to really take your time on.
The good thing that you’re going to hear from me is that we don’t have to do it right
now.
We can even finish this up, bake it, paint it, get it all ready and beautiful and still
be working on the skull.
We could even start on the muscles and not have the skull done.
That gives us a little extra time to just keep working that skull until you get it right.
Okay, so first things first, get your jelly out and put it on everything that we’re
going to be doing.
The hands, the forearms, the hands, the forearms, radius and ulna in this case.
We’re going to be putting scapulae on here.
These are really pretty tricky, so I’m hoping all goes well today.
The scapulae are challenging especially at this scale and especially because we want
them to look like they’re kind of floating.
Okay, as usual I need to get my handy-dandy cleaning device and try to clean my fingers.
You’ll also notice that I brought in my paint again.
We’re going to be doing the same thing we did with the little foot with the hand, the right hand.
Now, just to remind you what we did is we took a little tiny bit of this watercolor,
remember cadmium red light, and we went over the toes.
We’re going to be doing the same thing with the fingers.
I just want to bring a little bit more of this back in since I have it out.
I have it in my art box so now it’s out.
I’m just going to push this around again just to get us used to what we’re going
to be doing and reminding you of what we did already.
There, like that.
That looks good.
There.
I’m going to really push that.
That way I can really match the hand.
I want to make sure this is finished.
Plus, the other thing I’m doing, everybody, and you can do the same, is kind of cleaning
up the toes a little bit if they look a little rough.
There.
That looks really good.
Well, let’s do it.
The radius and the ulna is going to be done the way we did the tibia and the fibula.
Just to remind you, we combined the tibia and the fibula right over here.
Over here we have a separate tibia and fibula, so over here we have a separate radius and
ulna, so it’s going to match.
What we do with the leg we’re going to do with the arm.
Okay, that being said, let’s go ahead and start.
The ulna includes your olecranon, which is a fancy anatomy way of saying elbow.
What I’m going to do is just put a big clump of clay here.
This is going to represent both the radius and the ulna like that.
I just don’t want you thinking I’m doing anything fancy.
It’s really clunky at first.
What I’m doing here on this backside is making sure that you see that I’m blending
it all together.
I always try to use a little bit more clay than I need because that way I could reduce
it down a little bit rather than try to build it up.
Sometimes I go back and forth.
Sometimes I just start with just little pieces.
In this case, I wanted to start with one big clump.
I’m also keeping in mind that I want a nice big elbow here.
Okay, the radius and the ulna create kind of like this nice plank.
I’m going to rotate this around so you can see it from different points of view.
I’m trying to keep this somewhat rectangular.
There is definitely more clay here than we need.
What I’m going to do is just cut some of this off right along here.
This side doesn’t have to be quite as neat, as you can see, but it has to represent two
bones, so it’s a little wider.
The radius and ulna really have a big space in between them right in here, but we don’t
need to do that with this.
When I look at the backside, I want to make sure I still have an elbow and also an edge
here because the ulna has an edge.
You can feel that on your own arm.
There is a little edge in there or crest.
The crest is only really on the bone.
When you look at a living person it’s actually a furrow.
That’s my ulna right in here.
Do you see that?
Right in there.
It separates the flexors from the extensors.
This is the elbow.
I’m trying to keep these somewhat neat but not too neat, about like that.
I always think of kind of the Rodan version of an ecorché is about all you need.
Nice and rough but still really stable and beautiful.
That’s what I have here.
I feel.
It looks pretty good.
See this ridge right here that I’m trying to create right along from the elbow to where
the pink finger area would be.
That’s what that looks like.
Now, what I want to do is I want to create the actual hand to match the foot.
If you have a foot down below that’s real, fleshed out skin over it, little veins.
What we’re going to try to do is we’re going to try to replicate that.
We’re going to try to make sure that the toes look good, and the fingers look good.
So, this is way we do it.
First we start with the body of the hand.
When I say body I mean this part without the fingers.
Knowing that, watch.
Remember, we already put Vaseline on here, petroleum jelly.
I’m trying to stay out of your way but it’s not easy because my fingers are big, my hands
are big, and this guy’s hands are really tiny.
But you can kind of see that I’m doing the palm of my hand here.
I’m going to put some clay behind it as well because you’ll notice that the clay
is pretty sparse back here.
What I’m going to do is try to fill this out as well so that together it’s going
to be really meaty, and it’ll make it a little easier for me to do a pretty good hand.
I can reduce it from this point.
I need to put a lot of clay—see if you can see it on both the front and the back just
to kind of sandwich these wires.
The thumb needs to be separate from the other fingers, meaning it’s on like a different
plane.
Pinky finger will be kind of bent.
Each finger has a natural bend to it.
The index finger is the straightest, followed by this one, this one, this one—this will
be the most curled.
You’ll notice that the classic artist would always exaggerate what each finger does.
Instead of doing this it would actually exaggerate the curl of the little finger and the straightness
of the index finger.
Instead of doing something like this they would do it like this.
Let’s see if we could get these fingers to behave.
Pushing it through the wire.
Do you see the clay that I’m trying to push through, push through like this?
I’m going to use my little cuticle pusher tool here to create some of these little folds.
If you look at my hand you’ll see these little folds.
Especially since I’m an older man, older than most of you, I would imagine.
I don’t know.
But, I’m going to put a couple of these little folds.
This is the beginning of little creases.
Indentations, folds, creases.
There is another one here like that.
Do you see what I’m trying to do?
Create little creases, that’s all.
Nothing too fancy and pushing the clay through the wires.
You just have to manipulate this.
I’m going to get you to be really good with your fingers.
You kind of have to be.
You have to just be delicate about this and caress, caress, caress.
Remember, this is like your pet.
It’s a little pet and you’re petting it like this.
It’s like a big bump there.
I think I could hide it with clay.
I think later on it might disappear, but I am not sure so I might just really overdo
it and put a bunch of clay over that.
Make sure it doesn’t get in my way so I don’t have to change a lot.
The other good tool is, as usual, anything rounded.
I’m going to go in between each finger.
Notice I haven’t done any fingers or thumb yet.
I do those separately.
Look to see if this is, in fact, what you want with the fingers.
Look at what I did with the hand.
I’m basically kind of doing something like this.
I’m going to curl the little finger.
Notice that I also have more wire than I know I will need because I can trim that later.
If the wires stick out from every finger, that’s what you want.
The other thing that’s missing is the thenar prominence right in here, thenar eminence
right in here.
I’m going to put a big pad where the thumb is.
Do you see that?
Make it look like you’re doing a drumstick.
Look at that big old drumstick.
Do you see that?
Nice and meaty.
You don’t want a little spindly drumstick for lunch.
You want a nice, big juicy one.
Let’s put a nice big one.
You can see from lesson to lesson how much we get done.
I’m going to make you really productive.
There is that.
That’s the body of the hand without any fingers, and that’s what you need to remember.
Interestingly enough, this is also how I teach how to the hand.
Do it in sections like the body and then the fingers are drawn separately.
It’s amazing how much of a help that is to my students in my figure drawing classes.
Okay, once again, it’s sometimes a little difficult to try to keep out of the way.
I want you to see that I’m not doing anything except filling this in.
As you can see, your hand is much bigger than his hand.
It’s kind of tricky to try to work in a small scale like this.
It’s also really nice because I think it gets done faster than if you had like a big,
huge sculpture, actual size or something like that.
Plus it would be really expensive.
So you see what I’m trying to do?
I’m trying to create the little pads.
You have a pad for your little finger here and a pad for your thumb.
The other thing that I’m going to start trying to do is a little bit more of the creases
because your knuckles on the other side are right above where I’m putting that line.
It’s this little crease right in here.
It’s also the crease, the lifeline right in here.
You don’t have to get too noodly about it, but just make a couple little creases.
There is always like a little pucker right here, so I’m going to put this little puckery
guy right over here.
Sometimes you add these little puckers and wrinkles and stuff, and it just looks more natural.
It doesn’t have to be pretty.
You can see that this is pretty simplistic.
A lot of times what happens is this: When a viewer is looking at something like you’re
work here, it perceives more than there really is.
That’s exactly what you want to do as an artist.
Create the illusion.
Do you remember this?
Remember your vertebrae?
People look at that and they think you’re a genius, but you and I know better.
We know it’s just a little trick.
It’s like a little magic trick because everything that we do in art is just basically like a
magic trick.
You’re creating an illusion of something.
Alright, so the hand.
Now you can see in one quick easy step that we have a pretty good beginning of a hand.
The next parts are like the little sausages.
Now this is the part where you have to kind of eyeball this.
Make sure the hand isn’t too little, too big.
From the wrist, which would be right here to the end of the fingers should be about
an inch and a half to the middle finger.
So this length right in here.
You can convert that to centimeters, or we’ll do that for you.
Sometimes I just tell my students to use common sense.
Does that look like a baseball mitt?
If it does than it is too big.
Does it look like this guy has a little girl hand?
It’s too small.
How’s that?
I mean it.
I need you to help me.
Do you think that’s too big?
Too small?
I think it’s a little too thick.
If you said that too then that’s what I’m talking about.
It’s okay because I’d rather start with something a little bit thicker because I can
reduce it.
It’s easy.
So you start with a little sausage shape and then you reduce it.
Okay, take a look.
Remember, you and I both thought it was too thick, and it is.
But this is easier because now I just reduce the thickness of it.
How do you like that?
That’s enough.
You don’t need to go crazy with these things.
I’m curving that finger inward to make it match my own hand.
Curve, curve, curve, straight.
Middle finger straight.
What I’m going to do now is I’m going to put the little creases.
Remember, you have a model at the end of your arm.
Use it.
You don’t have to hire anybody.
Just use your own model, for God sakes.
There, like that.
Does that look good.
I’m pinching at where the knuckle will be.
All I’m doing is pinching, pinching, pinching a little bit.
Maybe even starting what would appear to be like little tendons.
In this particular case the back of the hand isn’t all that visible.
I’m not going to spend as much time as I do with some of the ecorchés that I do where
the hand is very visible on the backside.
I’m going to leave it kind of like this for right now.
Okay, there.
Like that.
Okay, so you do that with each finger.
So now it’s the middle finger, which is going to be too short if I only use that much clay.
I’m going to just take more clay.
I think the finger is too long.
I don’t know if you’re thinking that.
If you are you’re right.
Really use common sense.
It sounds trite, but since we don’t have a little tiny version in your room to help
you make this, you have to just use common sense and just look and keep looking.
When something bothers you that means there is something inside you telling you it’s
not quite right.
Something needs to be fixed.
There.
Those are the little wrinkles that are between your thumb and forefinger.
Do you see that?
I hope you can.
Another sausage.
Not too big, not too small.
If it’s a little bit fatter, as you saw, it works very well.
Here’s another sausage.
It’s kind of nondescript for a little bit, but I’m going to try to thread it through.
This is where you really have to kind of almost take a breath.
I’m going to flatten this little part out a little bit.
Do you see that?
We’re going to put that right in here.
Hopefully, if I do this right—it really also tests your depth perception.
You’re trying to find the very center of a three-dimensional form all the way through.
That’s it.
If the finger is too long it’s fine.
We can always amend that.
Just change it.
Make sure that the wire is really secure inside.
I’m blending.
This finger, too, is way too long.
I don’t know if you know this, but generally speaking, if you look at my hand, because
I’m a man, usually with men the ring finger is longer than the index finger.
With women it’s the other way around.
They’re either even or the index finger is longer.
It doesn’t mean anything if you are a female and it’s the other way around, like the
male version.
It’s just it’s one of those things on average for some reason with women.
Their index finger is longer than their ring finger.
On average, men’s ring fingers are longer than their index fingers.
Strange but true.
I try to bring these little fun facts for you.
Okay, so you rotate this around.
You can see that the finger from this point of view.
It’s all broken and wiggly.
So, fix it.
Look at that.
I’m also kind of trying to fix the other finger because it got a little rough.
There.
Now, let’s put the little creases again.
Since I have my hand right here looking to see where like a crease is there.
The other one is over here.
This is the straightest of all the fingers, the middle finger.
It’s the longest and the straightest.
It looks okay.
I’ll press the ends of the fingers a little bit.
Later on, if I can and I feel steady enough—I drank a lot of coffee today so I’m not sure
if I can do it.
I’m going to try to put the fingernails in there by cutting them into that area with
the X-Acto knife.
Just cut, cut.
Maybe a little cut there.
They’re so little that some of you might not be comfortable trying to do that.
Some of you might be rock steady.
Me, it just depends how much coffee have I had.
Alright, let’s keep going with the sausages.
I’m going to show you a little trick that will make the fingers look really good, besides
painting them, of course.
You know what?
How about if we do the thumbs?
Since the thumb only has two sections, the proximal phalanx and the distal phalanx, we
can put that thumb in there.
It’s only two little sections.
You can see that I’m doing a little thumb outside of the hand.
Then I’m going to kind of stick that right in there.
If I need to alter it I can and I will.
Of course, blend it together so it doesn’t look like it’s all two sections because
it is right now.
That’s a little knuckle right in here.
I’ll flatten out where the thumbnail would be.
There.
Can you see that?
There.
I need to take an X-Acto knife and shape this a little bit better.
See if you can see this.
I’m going to just operate on here.
I’m going to just try to make a couple of these little cuts
there and then blend.
Now let’s take a look.
It looks pretty good.
All the while I’m looking at my own hand, and this is where I’m going to ask you guys
to be patient and look at your own hand because I’m not looking at anything except what’s
at the end of my arm.
See that?
I want you to do the same thing so you don’t think I’m looking at anything or anything
outside the camera range.
I’m not.
I’m just looking at what I already have.
What we’re trying to do is replicate what we are, which is a person.
So now, when I rotate this around, there.
It kind of looks like a thumb, doesn’t it?
Good because I was looking at this.
And there, like that.
I’m smoothing out any little areas that might look like clay.
We’re trying to make it look like a hand that happens to be made out of clay.
I want to do this—there is this little three tendons, there is two here and one here.
I don’t have it very prominently, but it’s called the anatomical snuff box.
The pollicis muscles or the thumb muscles.
I want to just put a little gouge here right in here.
You could to that with your own hand right now.
What I want you to do is just kind of do this and really abduct your thumb like your hitching
a ride.
You can see the little tendons there.
You’re making this.
This is a good thing to look at.
You’re just making little tiny version of what you already have.
I’m bending wires because I want the pose of the hand.
I’m doing this on my own.
You do whatever you feel like when it comes to the hand.
You want to open something up a little bit more.
You want to close it up.
You do that.
Let me put a little crease over here.
I notice that there is a pretty good crease on my own thumb over here, so I’m going
to just augment that just a little bit.
Do you see that right there?
I’m also making more little wormy guys over here, little sausage factory.
What we had before is we had the bakery.
We were making pastries and stuff.
Now we’re making little sausages.
I hope you can see that as well for the other two missing fingers.
Take your X-Acto knife or your chopper and we’ll be making the ring finger now the
4th finger.
It can’t be as long as the middle finger, but I want it to be longer than the index
finger because it is male.
Now, what I need to do, and this is going to be hard for you to see, I’m going to
do the same thing.
I’m going to feed this through so that the wire is in the center of this little sausage.
And that, especially as I become older, becomes trickier and trickier, but we can do if we’re
patient.
Anytime you think the wire is going to start popping through you just realign your clay.
See how it popped out?
I don’t worry about that.
I just restart it and push it.
I could kind of see where it might be.
It’s pushing out a little bit more, so I just go back in and I just keep trying until
I feed it through.
I don’t know if you can tell what I’m doing, but the wire kind of popped through,
but instead of worrying about it or starting over I’m going to leave it.
I’m going to push clay around it.
The other thing I noticed is that these two fingers are pretty tight together, so I’m
going to just try to separate them a little bit.
What I’m doing now is squeezing this so that the wire will be inside the clay.
It’s not going to be easy, but I’m going to make it happen.
There, push it through.
It’s also because the other fingers are in the way a little bit.
Whatever I do you’re going to be doing, and whatever issues I have, you’re probably
going to find them too, so I don’t mind fixing them along with you.
I don’t know if you can see, but what I’m doing is I’m going to make sure that the
clay is now surrounding the wire.
I also see that that finger is much too long, which is fine because it’s so easy to fix.
We all know that know.
I’m going to cut around the wire.
Boy, it really doesn’t want to come off.
There it is.
Cut that little piece off.
I can see where the end of this finger is.
I want to see if you can see that.
Here is another sausage.
I think I might straighten it out a little bit before I bend it.
Let’s see if that works a little bit better.
Then I’ll pass that knowledge onto you.
I think it worked better when I kept it a little straighter and then bent it afterward.
There.
Now, notice I bent the finger.
It’s still way too long.
As you know, that doesn’t matter.
We’ll cut that off whenever we think we’re ready.
Let’s see if we can see that.
It’s a little tricky to get every angle for all of you.
You can see that’s starting to look like a hand.
How do you like that?
What I’m doing is they’re seems to be kind of a weird gap between these two fingers,
and I was trying to bridge that.
I think it’s acceptable now.
I’m straightening out this finger a little bit more.
Now I kind of like this.
I’m blending the pinky finger onto the body.
Here is the little trick I was going to tell you about.
First I need to shorten that pinky finger because it’s really super long right now.
I need to cut around this and take off the tip of that finger and curl it in towards
the other fingers because the pinky finger when it closes up it curves in toward the
hand.
There.
There.
There.
I’m trying to do it so you can see, but my big old hands—I need little tiny hands
like this guy has to make this work, but I don’t have that so I need to do the best
I can with this.
There, that’s pretty good.
At this stage, I’m going to show you what I was going to show you earlier, and that’s
this little trick.
Watch what I’m going to do.
I’m going to take these little tiny pieces of clay—I can’t even measure that.
I don’t know how little that is.
Do you see that?
Do you see how this is so little that it’s hard for me to tell you how little that is.
It’s like a pinhead.
Okay, well I just told you what it is.
It’s like a pinhead.
I want to put that right here, right on that little knuckle.
Do you see that?
I don’t want you thinking I did anything fancy.
I didn’t.
I’m just putting this little globule right there.
This is like a simple little trick I’ve figured out awhile back, and it works really
well.
What I’m going to do now is I’m going to blend that in.
That creates the protruding knuckle of that joint.
You could even put a couple little lines in there to simulate little wrinkles.
I’m going to blend it into the finger a little bit, but the finger will always have
that protruding knuckle in it now.
Push back there.
Do this.
How do you like that?
I’m going to do that with each one of those little fingers.
Remember, look at that.
Little pinhead.
It’s so small.
It’s hard for me to hold onto it.
I’m going to put that right on that knuckle and hope it stays there, and it does.
How about that?
I’m going to blend that one in
and put a couple little wrinkles.
I’m going to do that with all of them except the thumb.
The thumb doesn’t need it.
Now, as I’ve told you before, I have an oversimplistic way of doing pretty much everything.
I call it the MacGyver method.
You know you just deal with what you have.
I happen to only have a certain amount of skills so what I’ve done is I’ve utilized
the little amount of skill that I have and just try to take it as far as I can.
It makes it a little bit easier so I don’t have to compete with people that are amazing
sculptors because I’m not.
The whole idea is to not compete.
Just do the best you can.
In this case, I want you to just ease up.
If you’re having trouble doing what I’m doing, just remember I’ve done this for
awhile, and I’m trying to come up with ways that will make it easier for you.
And this is the easiest I’ve found to do this.
So, do you see what I did now?
I’m going to make a demarcation where the nail would be.
See, this is the thumb.
It’s putting the little markings where the thumbnail would be.
I hope you can see this because it’s tiny.
It’s a little tiny thumbnail.
At least, you know, to the viewer it reads like a nail.
This finger is very noticeable.
This is where the surgeon has to come out.
I’m also going to take a pair of scissors and cut off the ends of these wires and then
push the end of the clay over the tip of the wire so it doesn’t show.
I hoping that looks okay to you because it just needs to look like a hand at the end
of this arm.
I think it’s fine.
Just give yourself a break.
When we paint it’s going to look really, really nice, too.
Every little bit we do with this adds to it.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to grab my scissors and cut those for you.
Alright, so whether you have scissors or little handy-dandy wire cutters, we’ll need them
right now.
Scissors work just fine.
Now that I look at the open hand I can put a couple more little creases in there.
I don’t know if you saw what I did, but I looked at my own hand and saw a nice crease
right here at the beginning of my pinky finger right here, so that’s my model, remember.
I’m not doing anything that needs any kind of anatomical knowledge.
It’s just copying what you already have at the end of your arms.
That’s what I’m doing now before I do any cutting.
Now, what we’re cutting are these ends because you don’t want him to look like a cat.
So, what I’m doing is trying to get as close to the ends here.
I want to put this aside because these are like little prickly things.
You don’t want those on the floor, and you step on those with your bare feet or anything.
I’m going to just make sure that I don’t leave these around.
We’ll discard those later.
I’m just going right up to the ends.
Do you see that?
Just cutting the very ends.
You’ll notice I kind of bit off a little bit of the tips.
That’s okay because that’s exactly what I want to do.
I want to be able to pull the ends of the fingers over to the area I just cut to just
disguise the fact that there is a wire inside.
The whole idea is to hide the magic trick, not really pulling quarters out of people’s
ears.
You’re just kind of simulating.
All that means is that we need to kind of cover up the magic of this ecorché, which
is the wire frame underneath it.
Nobody is really that aware of it.
I do always like, and you might get this also, when somebody will ask you where you bought
the skeleton.
It’s like, I want one of those.
Where did you buy that?
You can proudly puff out your chest and say I made it.
What about the hands?
I made them.
What about that rib cage?
Everything is just this just fabulous wonderful thing.
Here, let’s see if we can look at that hand.
It’ll work.
I’m pulling the thumb a little bit because it got a little stunted.
The tendon goes to the thumbs, it activates the thumbs.
They’re on there now.
No big deal.
There it is.
Now, remember what we did with the toes we’re going to do also to the hands.
The ends of the fingers, the thumb, etc., will get this little bit of coloring.
It’s just like adding a little blush onto the subject.
It’s just a little bit of that color, which it needed.
The ends of the fingers.
I hope you can see that.
It’s very powdery, very light.
Boy that got too much.
I’m going to pull some of that off.
Knuckles, fingers, a little bit of color on here.
It just adds a little bit of life to them.
It’s almost like your resuscitating your little ecorché.
I’m not sure how much of that little pinky finger is visible, but I’m going to get
those knuckles pinker, a little bit more blood underneath the skin.
The pads of the fingers.
I know it’s hard to show you every little nuance, but the pads right in here and the
palm of the hand.
Granted, this is a very Caucasian person, it’s just I liked using the color of the
Sculpey.
If you wanted to do because you could, you could actually use different colorations to
this and make it darker skin like myself or even darker.
So you could always do that.
You can always play around with that.
Do different mixtures of different clays.
You already have the chocolate Sculpey.
If you mix it with this Sculpey if gives you like a little hybrid.
You could kind of play around with different Sculpeys if you wanted something other than
just the color of the Sculpey.
This just seemed to be really easy for me, leaving it like a fair-skinned person.
My daughter, because her mom is Irish, she’s very, very fair skinned.
I’m definitely not.
I have a lot of color to my skin, being South American.
I don’t look Sculpey colored.
Some of you may be Sculpey colored.
What I’m going to do now is put veins on.
There is a vein that kind of crosses over like this that I like a lot.
I’m going to put it across the finger like this.
The other ones are just random as if you’re drawing a tree branch.
There is an arcade that goes across each finger.
You have to be careful though because you don’t want the hand to look like it’s
bruised up either.
There it is.
Do you see that?
I hope you can see that.
I hope the camera is capturing that.
It looks creepy good from my point of view.
It’s really, really cool looking.
There, like that.
Very cool.
Since I have this out maybe I’ll put a little bit more on the foot, making it look more
translucent and delicate.
There, I like that.
That’s it for that little fun stuff.

Okay, this side is a little easier because it’s going to part of the chest wall here.
Each clavicle is going to be about an inch and a half long,
about the same length as the hand.
I’m going to just make it kind of simplistically first.
Think of like bicycle handlebars like this.
That’ll kind of give you an idea as to what we’re trying to do.
Think of bicycle handlebars like this.
That’ll kind of give you an idea as to what we’re trying to do.
Do you see that?
Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to fashion a really good little strong clavicle
here like so.
It kind of curls back to us.
Remember, it’s like a 3-speed bicycle.
Here are the handlebars.
Can you picture that as being like handlebars coming toward you?
If you can it’s going to really help me help describe this.
The nice thing about this side is it’s going to be really strong because it’s embedded.
It’s part of the overall structure, whereas over here it’s going to be kind of floating.
It’s really tricky to pull off.
What I need to do is try to make this as strong as possible.
It’s not always easy.
What I’m going to try to do is have it rest on this little area here.
This is just a little helper.
There is no way around this.
I don’t want to put wire in here like sometimes I do.
I want to keep it a little bit simpler for you.
I’m going to make the clavicle by itself.
I’ll get to this; don’t worry.
I just wanted to take a break from hands and do a different part of this session.
I’ll work that all the way down to there in just a little bit.
Is that about the size of the hand?
Yeah, it is.
It’s a little bit thick so I might trim that down.
Remember, I’m thinking of like bicycle handle bars.
I’m going to have this end of the clavicle resting on that there, that little piece of clay.
That’s just a little support clay.
I don’t oftentimes do this, but I need something there to help me place not only the clavicle
on there, but also the scapula.
Do you see what I’m trying to do?
It’s just adding clay there.
Hopefully this will make it easier for us to finish this up.
The actual humerus ends right in here.
We need something here to help support a scapula that I want to be floating away from these ribs.
That’s my objective.
I want you to know what I’m trying to get us to do together.
The best thing you could do is always have good anatomy books and good images in front
of you, or the lecture notes from my lectures in front of you.
This is where I’m going to put this and this is where it’s going to end up, kind
of like this.
I’m going to do the best I can to make this smaller and not so clunky.
It’s not always easy because of the scale.
Okay, so I just reduced it down a little bit more.
I’m going to really stick it onto there, onto the sternum.
I’m blending it into the sternum and maybe even the rib.
I’m going to attach it to that little helper like that.
That’s going to be the beginnings of this little area over here of trying to make sure
that this all fits.
The scapula is going to rest on here specifically the acromion process of the scapula.
There.
Now I could jump over here and do the radius and ulna before I do the scapulae.
The scapulae need a little bit more time for me to kind of build up my energy reserves
because it is kind of tricky.
It’s going to be really hard to do the scapulas.
What I’m going to do here is I’m just going to surround these two wires with clay.
The radius the one that follows the thumb.
The ulna is the elbow down towards the pinky.
If you remember, I put Vaseline on here.
I want to just double check.
I’m just getting secure that way.
I want to make sure that this is really on there because once I start, I might have rubbed
some of it off or whatever, and I don’t want that to happen, so I want to make sure.
Once again, I’ll get the handy-dandy cleaner, clean this up,
and I’m going to put clay on here.
In this case, I happen to have started with the ulna.
Because I don’t have a preference, I’ll just tell you, why don’t you do what I do.
If I told you that it made a difference and you would listen to me and just do this one first.
But right now, because I’m doing this one first, do this one first.
I don’t usually have a reason to which one I start with.
It’s just whatever I feel like.
I this case I’m making the ulna first.
The ulna starts off a little bit bigger, and it ends up being really thin.
It ends up almost like a little head at the end of it, which is called the styloid process.
If you can’t see what I’m doing, I’m just trimming this because it’s much bigger
than I need.
I put a lot of clay on there, and I just start reducing it down like this.
Do you see what I’m doing?
Just reducing it down.
It starts a little bit bigger because it’s your elbow, and it tapers to a smaller form distally.
Notice that there are wires sticking out so I need to really push it through.
There is like a little thumb that comes forward to attach to the receiver up here on the humerus.
We do the best we can.
It’s not going to be perfect.
It clamps on like this so your elbow or like my fingers like this, so that’s what I’m
trying to do there is that little nubby thumb.
It’s kind of fun to do a little mini person.
It makes you really appreciate your body a little bit more.
The knowledge that the old masters had because all this was in their heads, just kind of
like it is in mine.
It’s neat not to have to look at anything.
It’s all in my head.
It’s kind of like when you’re writing.
You don’t need to actually have a dictionary in front of you for everything that you’re
writing, especially if you’re just communicating with a friend.
I’m going to add to the elbow because I think the elbow needs to be fuller.
I want to kind of also hide a little bit of this wire back here.
You could do the same thing.
You’re replicating a big old elbow.
It’s kind of rocky, has a couple little angle changes.
It clamps on to the spool called a trochlea.
It’s like this, basically.
This part here stops so that you can’t straighten out your—you can’t bend backwards, basically.
Because women have a deeper hole here over here, they can hyperextend their arm back further.
That’s why sometimes you’ll see a girl or a woman leaning back on her arms at the
park, and it looks like the arms are broken backwards, whereas men don’t have that as much.
They tend to just stay at a straight line.
Those are all good things to know because when you’re depicting women you want to
bring out more of the girly stuff.
Men get more manly.
I’m thinking about classically that’s what we do.
Look at Peter Paul Rubens; that’s what he is doing, making the girls look more womanly
and the guys look more manly and heroic.
They’re illustrating huge big things like the Bible or mythology or something like that.
Reducing that a little bit, reducing this.
When you reduce this it makes the bones look really, really delicate.
It makes them look a little bit better for the size that we’re working with.
It’s really small.
The only way to do it is by reducing.
There.
There.
There.
That is basically the ulna with its olecranon, which we call the elbow.
That’s the basic gist of that, and then there is like a little head at the end of it.
I got a little bit of the little head there.
Now I need to do the radius.
The radius starts off small and ends up flaring out just a little bit more at the wrist.
As usual, I’m going to put a lot more clay on there than I need.
Do you see that?
I not I’ll straighten out the arm a little bit and bend it later.
Okay, it looks pretty good.
Now this one has a little socket because there is a ball or capitellum right over here.
I bet I could even put one on there just for fun.
Roll up a little ball so that it falls down.
Stick it on there, kind of, and we’ll see if that works.
If not, I don’t care.
It’s okay.
I need to put more clay on here first than is necessary.
I could make sure that the wire is inside.
That’s the whole objective right now.
You see that?
Watch.
I’m going to have to sandwich around that wire.
See what I’m doing?
I’m just sandwiching it.
It’s not easy but it’s got to be done, for Pete’s sake.
I’m still trying to force it and also not trying to mess up what I did
next door with the ulna.
Ah, there.
Now I’m closing it up.
Do you see what I’m doing?
Do you see that?
It’s really something.
It’s not that hard.
You just have to be patient.
You surround the wire like this.
The good thing is that this side gets really small, and it will meet up with that little ball.
There is this little thing called the radial tuberosity,
which is what your biceps is attached to right here.
I’ll put that in as soon as I blend this in a little bit better.
I’m trying to make it look like I’m getting rid of that seam.
Let me see what that looks like.
I want to get my head out of the way.
Tricky.
There.
Do you see how I’m reducing it little by little.
I’m trying to make it thinner and thinner and thinner, about as thin as I can get away with.
Like that game of operation, I’m trying not to touch the wire.
Alright, see that?
Little by little it’s coming to be.
We’re going to make this work and it’s going to be fabulous.
I reduced the ulna a little bit more.
Okay, do you see what we just did?

We just give it the good old once over.
Look around, see things that you might want to change.
We’re going pretty good now.
What we’re going to be doing are the scapulae.
I’m still playing with the toes and things like that.
Don’t be afraid of changing things, moving things around.
Now we’re finishing everything up, so I want to make sure that everything is looking
really good.
And voila.
See that?
Now where’s my—any kind of sharp stick or my favorite.
This is the rubber-tipped one?
Remember, I liked this one a lot.
That’s good for like in between fingers and in between toes like so.
Do you see what I’m doing?
I’m pulling it and it just kind of creates a little bit of a hollow there.
It also starts bringing out what would be the tendons of the toes like that.
Now that the toes are done, the fingers are done, hands are done, veins, radius, ulna.
Now it’s going to be—I’m not going to sugar coat this.
The scapulae can be very, very challenging, and some of you may cry a little,
but we have to do them.
Once again, the hand, the clavicle, the sternum are all three-quarters of a head long, which
in this scale means that they are an inch and a half.
Scapula, same thing.
You start with this triangular shape.
I’m going to do the right one first because it’s easier simply because it is the right side.
The right side in general is just easier because it’s like an indicated version of the real thing.
I want to remind you also that the humerus ends right in here.
And this is what we’re going to be attaching the end of the scapula to.
I want to just remind you that this is here just to help us, this little piece of clay.
Okay, over here we have all sorts of stuff including I might even need
a little bit more clay over here.
All this is, everybody, is just support for the scapula.
That’s all it is.
This isn’t a muscle.
It’s not anything anatomical.
It’s just support clay.
So far, so good.
With that being said, let’s get on with it.
So, a triangle.
Chopper.
This is the basic gist of what I’m trying to show you here.
The thing about the scapula, though, that’s kind of tricky is that it has—I’m trying
not to hide anything from you.
It has a medial border or the inside—this is the part that you see even through your
shirt you can see this.
Even the bottom part.
What you might now know, and I’m going to show you by—I’m going to take my left
hand and throw it over my right shoulder, and my fingers hit what is called the spine
of the scapula, which is going to be this little guy right in here.
Do you see what I’m doing?
Because this is so thick, I can pinch it out like a little mountain range.
See how that is?
Like that, like that.
I’m also going to liberate it at the end, meaning I’m just going to like shoot it
off into space like this.
I’m going to make a dish here because this is like the scapula has an indented dish.
I don’t know if you’re going to be able to follow this but I’m going to have to try.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to turn this as if I’m turning a key to get into my home.
Do you see what I just did?
I grabbed the end of this.
Watch really, really carefully because, again, it’s going to look like a little magic trick,
but I’m going to teach you this little magic trick.
What you’re going to do is you’re going to take this—see how my thumb is facing down?
I’m going to take my thumb and face it up.
Now, that being said, you just turn this around.
Now I’m going to push this forward, and that’s the acromion process like that.
That’s what’s going to touch and attach to the clavicle.
Do you see that?
I mean it’s a simplistic way of doing it, but it’s kind of the way I teach it like that.
The end of the clavicle touches the end of the scapula right there creating the shoulder girdle.
Basically, what I want you to notice is this.
I want you to think about this.
Listen to my words and listen to the terms that I use or the terminology that I’m going
to be using because I want you to see that clavicles are collarbones in the front.
I want you to see the spine of the scapula is basically like the collarbone of your back.
It’s like the equal of it.
It’s not exactly right but at least it gives you something to think about.
That’s the scapula like that.
Now, if I want to—and I think I do—I want to blend it because I want to make sure that’s
not going to fall apart like so.
I don’t know if you can see it.
Now, the tricky part is going to be this is the top portion f the scapula.
It’s going to be the one that’s floating away.
It’s easy to do this one.
This one is relatively easy.
I’m going to push my thumb in here because I need to create a dish in here.
This part is out like this.
Okay, that’s pretty good.
That helps a lot.
Now I need to do one like this, but it’s going to float away from that.
That one is really tricky.
There is just no two ways around this.
It’s not going to be easy, but I’m going to have to show you how I do it.
Once again, I start with that triangular shape.
I want you to see what I’m doing.
I’m just pulling and pulling that little triangle.
To me the scapula always resembled South America.
See that?
That’s Tierra del Fuego.
That’s Colombia up there, Chile, and Argentina along here.
There, like that.
I’m going to try to replicate that on the other side.
The scapula is highly moveable.
It moves around your thorax.
It basically glides around the thorax like this.
I’m trying to once again create the spine of the scapula.
See how I’m just pinching it little by little?
This one needs to be a little bit nicer.
This is the superior aspect of your scapula, which means higher, not to make it seem like
it’s this complicated word.
Superior aspect just means higher.
Now, we have a socket that we really can’t do that with all that clay in the way, so
what we’ll do is we’ll just pretend like the socket is going to be like so.
So what I do is make sure that the clavicle is ready for us.
The clavicle is a little bit higher than the acromion process.
If you’re looking at my lecture notes or looking at your anatomy book, you’ll see
that that’s true.
I hope you can see that.
What I did is I just made sure that I could see this more prominently.
Let’s see, how can I get this over there?
I want to make sure this kind of looks like it floats.
Remember what I did with that other one?
I just take it and turn it and have it face forward.
I’m looking for my X-Acto knife; here it is.
Because this spine of the scapula is actually like liberated right in here.
This is where the socket would be of the glenoid fossa.
Then there is a little channel here, let me show you on the real thing, the real deal.
There is a channel here where there is a tendon from the supraspinatus that holds the ball
of the humerus onto this glenoid fossa.
It sounds overly complicated, but we’re a machine.
If you know this machine it wouldn’t sound as complicated.
We are.
I’m making the indentation because there is an indentation there, and then the bottom
part is less indented.
The scapula is a lot thinner than you would think.
I have real scapulas at my studio, real human scapulae.
They’re very delicate.
You can see light through them.
You can hold them up and see light through them.
But we can’t really do that very easily with this.
I’m trying to shape this so that the bottom point here is lower right there.
Okay, now I think I have enough stuff here, and I’m going to force this so that it’s
on this piece of clay, and it is in fact floating away from the thorax.
Watch what I do when I point this to you.
I’m showing you that there is a lot of airspace in between.
We also see that this acromion process is not quite yet touching where it should be,
which is right in here.
We need to make sure we force everything, we make everything work and behave.
That’s the acromion process as it meets up with the clavicle, and that is basically it.
There is a little scalloping over here where the tendon of the trapezius will be right in there.
The rest is for the deltoid muscle.
Alright, kids.
That’s about it.

You just give it the once over, look at everything, see how it’s looking.
It’s going to be headless.
Now what we need to do is the hand.
You thought you were finished, but you’re not.
I’m just going to put a little piece of clay—see this little piece of clay?
Just double-checking, I know I put Vaseline on there.
You saw me doing that.
I’m just not going to take that for granted.
This part is kind of fun.
Once again, you have to be patient because it’s fun.
It’s easy.
I don’t know about fun.
It’s somewhat easy, but you just have to be patient.
It’s kind of like putting the ribs on the wire.
You just have to be really, really patient about this next step.
I’m just going to reduce this because when I take a look at this point of view, it just
seems really thick.
The other thing that’s missing is the radial tuberosity, which is a big bump right here.
Now I hope you can see it.
If I put it on the side here you can see that there is a bump here.
It’s not always easy to keep my hand out of the way.
If I reduce around it that will also help in getting that to come out.
Radial tuberosity is there.
This is getting off the wire, and I need to push it back because I didn’t like that.
Okay, now, I’m going to roll these out again.
You’ve seen me do this many times.
Well, you’re going to see me do it once more.
About half of an inch.
And you feed the wire.
Feed it right through this, so that the wire is on the center of this.
There.
That’s the first metacarpal.
I’m going to press on the center so that the ends flare out like a dog biscuit.
I know it’s hard to see but there.
Like that.
Do you see that?
Now, two more.
Each finger has one metacarpal which are inside your hand and then two on the thumb for the thumb.
Did that make sense?
Two little bones that make up the thumb.
One, two.
This is one of them.
This is the other.
Guess what, we’re going to do this with every finger that you see.
Each finger—this one is the easy one because it has one metacarpal and then two phalanges,
the proximal and the distal.
The other ones all have one metacarpal but then three segments for each and every finger.
It’s silly but it works.
We do this with each one of these fingers.
Once again, I ask for you to all be patient with yourselves.
There is no way around this.
We just have to do this one little bone at a time.
I’m going to make this a little bit bigger, and I’ll reduce it while it’s on the wire.
This is the 2nd metacarpal.
Hey, I have an idea.
I’m going to do the metacarpals first.
I think I’m going to do each finger like we did the fingers, sausage-ey and then split them.
I think it might be easier.
Let’s try that.
These are just the metacarpals.
That.
This might be too big and too long, but it doesn’t matter.
I can always alter that while it’s on the wire.
I just want to get this going and so do you, so it’s not too belabored.
I’m just feeding it through the wire.
I have to do this with each and every one of these, so you do as well.
There.
It’s kind of hard to see but I’m just feeding these through.
They’re a little bit bigger and fatter than I want, but we’re going to take the X-Acto
knife and just kind of chop them up a little bit, make them a little bit more refined.
Now it’s pinky finger’s metacarpal.
Meta means beyond, remember?
Carpal means wrist.
It’s hard for you to see exactly what I’m doing.
I’m just feeding him through the wire.
Do you see that?
If I turn this, if I force it, you can see a little bit better.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to try to cut in between each one because they’re
just too thick.
Come on, so tricky.
Each one I just want much more reduced.
Because they’re so big I’m just cutting around them.
It’s easier for me to cut around them then to try to put this sliver of a bone on this
sliver of a wire.
You can see if you look very carefully all I’m doing is cutting in between each one.
Cutting and reducing.
It’ll look a little bit more sophisticated.
I can’t do that any better.
It’s just hard.
So the next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to make it easier on all of us.
It’s hard because the scale is so little, you know what I mean.
What I’m going to try and do is look at that hand and try to mimic this hand, but
what’s inside it.
I’m going to take these little sausages and push them through there.
I’m going to create make what I can’t see as knuckles.
I’m trimming in between the ends, so that the ends hear flare out and become more knuckle like.
It’s kind of what it looks like.
Alright, so sausage.
Here it comes.
Let me put this where you can see it.
Shaking so much here.
Boy, this got really weird over here so I’m going to trim it.
Okay, let’s see if this will help us out.
I think it will.
I think it’s going to end up—I’m blunting the end here because this is an actual finger.
I’m going to start with a real finger and then just reduce it down and make it bone.
I think it’ll be much easier.
You feed it through and knowing that there are three segments, let’s just make little
demarcations where each segment is, shall we.
Take a sewing needle.
I’m going to put one demarcation here and the other one here.
Let’s see if we can make this work because I’m willing it to be so.
We’re going to make it work.
Do you see what we just did?
Pinch the end.
Voila.
If I need to like I’m going to take an X-Acto knife and trim so they’re not so big.
Trim so it’s not so big.
Let’s take a look.
Can you see that?
It was easier—boy, this is shaking a lot.
Let me make sure so it doesn’t get distracting for you.
Alright, that’s one finger.
Let’s do it again because I think that did work.
Another sausage is the middle finger.
Make it blunter and maybe even thinner.
There is a finger so let’s do that.
Feed it through.
Now do the demarcations as we did before.
One and two.
And obviously that’s really big, fat bony finger, and we don’t want that.
Of course, we’re going to reduce it.
I’ve never done it quite like this before, but I think by trying to make it easier for
you it’ll help me make it easier for me.
Therefore, from now on this is the way I’m going to do it.
Start with the sausage finger first, and you just separate each segment of each finger.
It doesn’t have to be perfect but that’s pretty good.
I’m going to do the 4th and 5th fingers.
Then we could bake this.
Here is another finger, much too long.
We know that already.
Here we go again.
Let’s feed it through.
Straighten out the fingers first.
I think it’ll be easier.
It looks kind of neat, though, doesn’t it?
It’s starting to look really nice.
Not perfect but doesn’t need to be.
That’s the thing that you have to keep remembering.
It does not have to be perfect for Pete’s sake.
Like I said before, if somebody criticizes it, just get rid of that person.
You don’t need that in your life.
I’m going to make this a little bit shorter and bony.
Remember the next step?
Come on, tell me.
That’s right.
Just make separations.
One and two, two segments.
That’s it.
There.
Just remember to breathe so that I don’t mess anything up.
Watch, we’re going to split this up.
Cut into it.
Cut into it like that.
You have your ring finger.
Now, little tiny baby finger.
That’s it.
And I can pose that.
Hopefully, it’ll look pretty good.
It’s a simplified skeleton, but it’s a good one.
It’ll teach you a lot.
It’s also very humbling to do something that’s so beautifully designed for us.
Okay, let’s feed it through.
The wire kind of missed in this one, so what I’m trying to do is force it.
Force the clay around the wire like this.
I’m going to separate that one just a little bit because I think it’ll be easier.
Take off some of the fat right in here, just carve that out
and make demarcations, two of them.
One here, one at the end, and I think I had—ooh, it all pulled off.
I tried to pull off the tip and the whole finger came off.
But I don’t sweat it.
No big deal.
We’ll fix it.
I’m going to trim this off a little bit, make it look like a little pinky finger with
its little demarcations where the knuckles are.
There, kind of like this.
Now, what I want to do is I want to take my X-Acto knife and put it right up against that
joint just to bend the fingers like that.
This is where you come in.
You can pose this whatever way you want with the hands.
Cause now it’s like a doll and you can bend it.
I’m going to bend this finger up towards me like this.
I hope you can see that.
Let me get that right there.
I’m going to cut the nails off.
It looks a little bit unruly now, so what we’re going to do is get it ready for the
big dance and cut its nails and get it all preened.
You put as much time as you want to into this.
I just don’t want to put any more time into that hand because it’s okay the way it is.
Do you see what I mean?
It looks good.
It’s all you need.
I want to bend this finger just a little bit more to make it look more natural.
When you turn this around you’ll see it’s fine.
I’m going to cut the thumb like that.
Boy, stop moving.
There, like that.
I’m going to bend where the thumb is right in here.
It’s this joint right in here.
I think I’m going to do that.
Let’s see.
The other thing I need to do is what do I want to do with this, and I think what I’ll
do is bend it up.
Your arm has a natural bend to it like this.
Now I see it and I like it.
There is a little excess clay in here.
I’m going to just get rid of that.
Just say skedaddle, go somewhere else.
This looks really good.
I might bend this in a little bit.
Pronate, supinate.
You could do that now as well.
I think I can leave it like this.
Maybe I liked it a little bit better supinated.
Let’s look at it before we put this in the oven.
We did a lot this session.
The scapulae are not easy.
If you’re having trouble with them just go back and try to fix that up as much as
you can.
We have the support all around.
Everything looks pretty good.
The hand looks good.
It’s got a little wire sticking out of there.
I just don’t let things like that bother me too much.
There.
That’s it.
Alright, so what do you think?
I know it’s a little tricky.
Those scapulae are tricky, but we did it, so let’s move on to finishing up the skull.
We’re actually going to be baking in the next lesson.
Baking and painting.
So, stay tuned.
This is where everything starts coming together.