Vergilius - Many thanks!!
Tony - Thanks again for your kind comments! I appreciate your interest. I start mostly with chunks of hard putty - torso and hips - linked by wire. This is the "skeleton", but sculptors call it an armature, for some reason. I put it in the pose I want and keep futzing with the putty, adding more, cutting, sanding, etc., until done. The skeletons I showed in the "On the Wire" vignette were from metal ones from Sol Models. I used the skeletons themselves as the armatures, adding thin slices of putty for clothing. Not a technique I would recommend, nor would I use it again. It is all too easy to end up with a bulky-looking figure. I also don't recommend using the commercially available resin mannikins for the same reason. If you bought one of them and sanded it until it looked anorexic, then scribed lines all over it to hold onto the putty, that would be about right as a starting point, but it's a lot easier just to use small blocks of hardened putty and wire.
All the best,
Dan
