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Hey, I'm not my any means great at sculpting, but can do things like cloth, ropes, press moulding, basic shapes etc.

I was thinking to make some 28mm crowns to have as rings on a troll king, but to not look like normal rings, they would need to be a bit ornate, have the kind of 'crenellations' on the top etc.

Any tips on how to go about sculpting this? Or should I just cheat and paint them in?

Thanks!

So, Burger King crown as an example. A ring with four cross topped peaks.

What you could do is fashion a broad, not too thick green stuff ring around the finger and then use a wedge shaped tool (I have a sculpting tool like that, but a knife or in the worst case a needle will achieve the same thing) to push the one side of the ring inward at four points. This will give you the basic shape with indentations and peaks sitting atop a ring. You'll also build up some green stuff around the edges of the peaks that you may want to smooth out if you want a flat crown or keep and possibly clean up if you want depth inside the crown. In the latter case you may want to push up the bottom edge of the crown to matchLeave that to cure.

In a second step you can then add ornamentation such as the cross to each peak (if you want a true Burger King crown), gemstones, or any other decoration you think will fit.

I would sculpt the ring first, then add the crennelations or wavy bitsafter using more putty. Depending on your sculpting skill you could add some sort of jewels, or a furry brim.

I'd probably do it with plasticard; definitely the least fiddly way of doing it. Using putty of any kind would be a pain and require a bit of practice and skill, and I'd use plasticard as a base for doing that sort of work anyway.

Get some really thin sheets of plasticard, and cut yourself a thin strip with one patterned side like this:


(I just googled 'paper crown net' and that's what I got...)


...then wrap it around the finger and glue. Should be simple enough? The knife work might be a bit fiddly, but again it should have a lot lower skill floor and much better repeatability than truly 'sculpting' it.

You can work on top of the basic plasticard shape if you want some extra details; little balls or diamonds of greenstuff for gems etc. Getting some thin-gauge copper wire is really useful too; it's a pretty easy way to add detail at a really small scale and keep it looking neat.

Plasticard is going to be far too fiddly at such a small scale surely?

Do you have a specific model in mind? What are the fingers like? Do you need to model a ring all the way around an individual finger, or just the part that is showing on a closed hand?

As people have already said, for this sort of scale you really don't need a lot. Little ribbon of green stuff with notches cut in one side.

Couldn't stop thinking about this last night for some reason... So I gave it a go this morning. Spent a little under half an hour on it:

Wow Shimvo! I must admit I also wrote off plasticard as overly fiddly, but that is actually really impressive

They wouldn't need to go all around the finger, its an old river troll, where the fingers are probably about the right size compared to most 'heroic' heads. Possibly a touch small.

Indeed, colour me convinced.

 Scythern wrote:
Wow Shimvo! I must admit I also wrote off plasticard as overly fiddly, but that is actually really impressive

They wouldn't need to go all around the finger, its an old river troll, where the fingers are probably about the right size compared to most 'heroic' heads. Possibly a touch small.

Around a finger... probably very carefully by layering shapes, fully curing and sanding.

also reminding me a lot of double king

Most impressive. 0.5mm drill bit?