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Tinfoil Magic - Making scuptures from tinfoil
By  Eleonora Bruk
Tinfoil...what this material reminds you of? Chocolate (of course), roasted chicken, meat in general? Of course, this is household material for preservation of food. But have you ever, ever considered it a material for making - sculptures? Of course not; when talking of sculpting materials, we think of such materials as stone, clay, marmor, but not tinfoil. Neither did I, to be honest, until I found a little, torn up book in the dark recesses of my school library at hte age of 9. I was absolutely bedazzled by this book, but didn`t make notes about the author, since I was a kid and it didn`t matter to me anyway. You can`t imagine how much I regret this now!...but it`s too late, I suppose. That school library doesn`t even exist anymore...only thing I remember about this book is that the author was a German, and that`s the only clue I`ve got. But, since I learnt almost everything that was in the book, I`ll present with what I know, so you won`t feel at a loss ;o))) To be honest, 90% of the book contained only basics, and the rest I was self-taught (I regret that 10%, anyway).
Now, onto the tinfoil magic!
To start, you need tinfoil, of course. Just tear off a nice quadratic piece, like in this pic. Any generic tinfoil roll product will do.
Now that you have a quadratic piece of tinfoil sheet, the next step is to squash it with your hands. Do this gently, though - don`t tear the sheet in process! When you do this, slowly straighten the sheet back to its original size. The purpose of this step was to create the basis for further twiching and twisting of your foil sheet.
(Doesn`t this shape remind you of Australian continent??)
Now onto the rolling! This is easy and quick - you just have to roll the sheet like you would roll, for instance, a cigarette. Sorry, non-smokers, I can`t think of any other compararison at the moment :o&
When you`ve rolled the sheet, twist it in the middle. It does not have to be the perfect middle, and twist shouldn`t be too long. The twist is going to be the body of our mysterious figurine ;o))) and you can shrink it by pressuring it later, but don`t overdo it because the longer the body, the harder is to shrink it!
When you`re done with body twistin`, flatten both sides of the sheet. Just for reference, the white arrow marks the place of the main twist.
Here comes the *real* job. Split the both sides (or ends) in three equal portions. Be careful how you do this - though it seems easy enough, the foil may break off! It`s OK if it`s a leaf or two, but if a whole portion breaks off, your sculpture will lose an extremity and become an invalid before it`s even made (poor thing!) !!! I`m just kidding, heh, what I meant is that you`ll have to throw the sheet in the trash can and start the whole process all over, which isn`t such a bad thing for learning the technique, but your Mom is definitively going to be pissed off for throwing away unused tinfoil, and I wouldn`t recommend that! If she DOES get pissed off, don`t blame me :op
Are you ready for some more twisting and rolling?? Do I hear you say YES??? Onto the job, then! White arrow marks the place of twist, of course. Remember me mentioning the extremities in the previous step? Well, now you`ll be doing them.
Right now we are doing hing legs + tail (tail is the middle portion) . I am doing left hind leg, but can do right if you feel like it, the order doesn`t matter. I suggest, though, that you first do the legs, and then the tail. When you roll each leg, leave it straight and stiff like it is. We`ll get back to that later.
(I apologize for this pic being so blurry and all, but my camera is even wackier than me) Roll front legs in the same fashion as the hind ones. If you did everything OK, you should have something like...this. As much as I love and respect Dali`s art, we won`t leave this creature looking nadrealistic like it is ;o)))
Now start rolling head portion as you would the legs, but stop when you reach the approximate size of a neck. Separate out two leaves (marked with blue arrows) - they will be ears. Continue rolling the head like marked with white arrow and sculpt it to resemble the dog`s snout (so much for "mysterious" sculpture ;o))). When you`re done, sculpt those two leaves in two long, falling ears like those of an Irish setter or Spanish cocker.
Leave the tail as it is, shrink the body if necessary (if it`s too long), and shape the legs. Lift the end of each leg for 90° to create a paw, twist the back legs backwards to create joints, and do some other small adjustments if you wish...
Voila! You very first tinfoil figurine! A cute Irish setter-bastard-or-somesuch ;o))) this is only a simple dog figurine, but you realize that this is the basic construction for everything else - humanoids too! I`ve presented you the basics, and everything else (you do) is pure art! Experiment, add or ...the most important thing to remember when sculpting foil is that you first do strong, basic body with little or no detail, and then add the fancy things like horns, antlers, wings, multiple tails, barbs, eyes...one more thing - if you`re going to do wings (on dragon, for example), first make some basic extremities above arms because wings have to hold on to something!
Remember, it took me several months to make Thordar, and I`ve been making foil figurines for years! Don`t expect marvelous results at once and don`t quit easily! When you learn your way around tinfoil, you`ll have loads of fun discovering how to make complicated fantasy creatures or nude models (like I do ;o))) and play with colored tinfoil leaves (from chocolate boxes) on your sculptures. Please, I would very much like you to send me your figurine pics when you learn the basics. I`ll be happy to see your progress! My e-mail is in my gallery for your future reference. Maybe in future I`ll make some more tutorials on such specific matters as making wings, working with color and other stuff, but only if you wish it ;o)))
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 24 Apr 2006 |  The Hyper Crazy Fantasy Person!!! | Oh, I love this article soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. It's hard to do..... and my sister thinks it's stupid but I still like it!  | |
| 7 May 2006 | Tenor <tenor_saxamapho | Hey,
Nice tutorial! A bit confusing and the pictures where the tinfoil was shiney were hard to see,. but i got it.
Now i'm gonna forget about my homework, and go downstairs and get my tinfoil (it's in the basement because i was using it to make a all tinfoil ornithopter. Nice.
Anyhow, keep it up.
Tenor | |
| 22 Jun 2006 |  Eleonora Bruk | it's nice to read your comments and realize you really like it! I've a gallery here in Elfwood, as you can see, but unfortunately it isn't linked - you can go and have a look at what I've done besides the little dog ;-)
thanks for the comments, even for the enviroment discussion (and how many trees is going to be cut for making paper? not everybody draws in Photoshop these days, you know). | |
| 24 Jun 2006 | Informatic | A suggestion is that just like artists back in the day, this method is a useful tool for starting artists who want to draw better.
Most starting sculptors focus so much on detail that they can't get the basic proportion. Tin foil forces the artist to make a simpler image.
What's even better is that when you're satisfied with it you can always put clay on top of the tin foil image and sculpt it out into a finished more detailed image for making a mold out of.
There are plenty of books on the subject.
Sculpting gives you hand-eye coordination. The hardest thing I've found being a fantasy artist is that I have been taught in school to draw what I see. But sometimes I am creating something truelly unique and want to see what it would look like together. Or say I want to see the proportions of an average sized human to say a dragon that is ten times taller.
Sculpting also helps in visualising unique perspectives like worms eye or birds eye or oblique angles. It also helps in consistency if you're a comic artist.
Good luck! | |
| 10 Nov 2006 | Anonymous | Interesting...I'll try it! Please add in some more tips on making things like wings etc... cause I'm really eager to learn more about this! | |
| 15 Nov 2006 | Anonymous | This is completely awsome!!!!
I love this article!!! | |
| 11 Mar 2007 | Celtic_Skater | Hey this sounds awesome. I am prbably gonna try this but I mainly do Furry Art. Right now I am working on a guy called Joseph Williams, he is a humanoid fox but I am getting off topic. I am gonna try this out tommorrow, and I totally agree that you should make wings and stuff, then I could make a dragon, or a dog with wings *LOL*. | |
| 19 Oct 2007 |  Caroline J. Anderson | Yes! Make more! :~) I love this technique, there's an idea for a tinfoil pheasant in a really old book I've got, but it's mainly made of feathers. I've got to try this... | |
| 27 Nov 2007 |  Eleonora Bruk | thank you for your comments! in the near future, I promise there will (FINALLY!!!) be a sequel to my famous doggy  | |
| 23 Mar 2008 | Anon. | fanstastic and fasinating stuff ! . ive just tried to creat a ’figurine’ i say that as its not entirley clear what it is . :| looks a bit spiney ans skinny ? , not healthy looking thats for sure . i couldnt get the foil to stay together? this obviouslt takes alot of skill . ! congratulate you on these pieces of art . amazing , - i orniginally was looking for stuff to make out of tin foil 4 my art project in terms of ’recyling’ .. love it though. you should definatley persue a career in it . if not done alreayy . sorry im anonymous ... im not signed in . > Ash . | |
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