Simple Fur Tutorial

Have you ever wondered why you can't make pretty fur without spending hours and hours trying to make those disobedient strands of putty hair lie exactly the way you want?

If you have, you're probably trying too hard. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best, and that is what I will show you in this tutorial.

You will need:

A clean sculpting tool (if you don't have an actual sculpting tool, your modelling knife or a toothpick will work fine).

Some sculpting putty. I will be using Green Stuff for this tutorial.

A small piece of smooth plastic bag roughly three times the size of the patch of fur you want to sculpt.

A tiny amount of baby or sweet oil.

When you measure the amount of putty needed, a good practice is to prepare about half the amount you think you are going to need for the job. If you don't prepare enough you can easily add more, but if you prepare too much you will - in the long run - end up wasting a significant amount of potential sculpting material.

First, add a very, very thin layer of oil to the inside of the bag piece.

Mix your putty and place it inside your piece of plastic and flatten it to about 1 mm/0.03 in, then cut the whole thing into roughly the shape you are after.

When this is done, remove the plastic from one side of the shape so that you can sculpt directly onto the putty.

Now, using your sculpting tool (or the blunt side of your modelling knife), draw vertical lines in your putty about 0.5 mm/0.015 in apart. Don't worry if it isn't exact.

Always draw your lines over the whole piece, don't leave any edges at the top or bottom.

Once the shape is full of vertical lines, start drawing 'S' shapes of various sizes all over the vertical lines. Keep the position of the 'S' shapes as random as you can, let them touch and overlap and do not stop until all the straight lines are gone.

Make sure your 'S' shapes extend beyond the upper and lower edges of your piece of putty.

The most important thing at this stage is to always keep your tool tilted down towards the lower end of your patch of fur and always draw your 'S' shapes top to bottom.

Your fur is nearly complete now. Use a toothpick or the tip of your sculpting tool to lift some of the strands of hair and create a more wild and ragged look. This makes the fur look a bit more alive and dynamic.

When this is done, let the putty cure for about 10 minutes.

After the putty has cured a bit, remove the fur from your plastic and place it onto your model. Press your sculpting tool into the left and right edges of the fur to emulate fastenings and to actually fasten the putty onto the model.

Take the upper side of the fur and gently roll it onto itself with your sculpting tool to create a sense of gravity and weight.

Play around with how you want the fur to hang. Remember that it will always hang pretty much straight down because fur is usually rather heavy and the wind have to be quite strong to make it move much.

Have fun creating your own!