Mixing Sculpting Materials: What You Need to Know
If you don’t have much experience, you might be tempted to mix materials. Before you do, read this article—it might save you some serious headaches.
4 November 2025
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AI has clearly arrived and is here to stay, creating significant concern across industries, particularly in the creative sector. While we still don’t fully understand its ultimate impact or how dramatically it will reshape established workflows, the potential is undeniable. We can already see this transformation in our daily lives—from apps that bring inanimate objects to life to AI-generated videos proliferating across the internet. The capabilities are simply mind-blowing.
For those unfamiliar with how this process works, let me illustrate with an example from a friend of mine, Pete O’Connell. He works as a compositor for Weta Digital and is something of a tech guru who loves exploring the possibilities of cutting-edge tools.
Using ChatGPT, Pete began with simple tasks: “Create a symmetrical image using a tree,” or “Generate a 2D mapping of an industrial pipe network,” or “Make a picture of a person crossing the desert on a camel.” For each prompt, you can refine the outcome iteratively. For instance, after seeing the desert crossing image, he might say: “Bring the camera closer to the person. I want it to be a woman in her 40s. Make it more photorealistic. I want to feel the atmosphere and heat, and perhaps make the sand pink instead of yellow.” This process continues indefinitely until you achieve the desired result.
Through this method, Pete created an entire series of AI-generated images that could easily pass for movie stills. His secret was using extremely detailed prompts to maintain greater control over the final output, feeding the AI as much specific information as possible to guide it toward his vision.
Another compelling example is Steve Johnson, a legendary figure in practical effects who designed creatures for films like The Abyss, Ghostbusters, and Poltergeist—work few people can match. He’s been experimenting with AI as well, posting images on his Facebook page while firmly stating: “I will defend that producing these images is an artistic process, and I will defend that until my last day.”
My final example comes from Instagram, where I recently discovered an artist whose work literally stopped me in my tracks, his name is @gOnaji. Every video is AI-generated, yet they depict surreal worlds filled with decaying dancing figures mixed with uniforms from different historical eras, colorful costumes in underwater environments blending with wind and dust. The realism is almost unbelievable—reminiscent of the visual aesthetics in The Cell starring Jennifer Lopez. This artist must invest countless hours behind the computer to generate these extraordinary images.
These examples help illustrate how AI functions as an assistant—an incredibly powerful one. Moreover, each AI system can be trained to your specific needs. As you use your AI platform, you’re essentially training your assistant with the information you provide. It learns from you and adapts to your requirements, understanding your communication style, tone preferences, and quality expectations. This personalization makes it remarkably special, like a custom-tailored tool designed specifically for you.
This is why artists like Steve Johnson legitimately claim AI-assisted creation as an artistic process. However, this development amplifies an ongoing debate in the art world. Since the Avant-garde movement, art has experienced continuous upheaval as established historical foundations were challenged and conservative perspectives shifted through the work of artists like Rodin, Picasso, Monet, and Duchamp. The past century’s artistic evolution has steadily deconstructed traditional definitions, creating a landscape where almost anything is possible. Today, we can encounter virtually any form of expression in art galleries—which is liberating for human creativity but also somewhat unsettling.
Now AI can create virtually anything you desire, provided you have the patience to guide it properly. This raises a challenging question: Do you agree this constitutes a genuine creative process? I do agree, though not without reservation. It is indeed an artistic process to achieve these results. The concern is that theoretically, anyone can now be an artist. While this democratization opens unprecedented opportunities for self-expression, does it lower the bar for artistic practice? Or does it simply make the field more competitive?
Exploring possibilities has always been fundamental to artistic practice. What distinguishes artists is what they do with those possibilities. I see AI as a tool for generating raw material that artists can then transform into something meaningful. Why shouldn’t we use it to spark our own ideas and incorporate them into our work? Is this inherently problematic?
Consider historical precedents: Before photography became commonplace, painters worked from direct observation. Today, nearly 90% of figurative painters work from photographic references. Is this wrong? Sculptors once worked exclusively with metals, marble, and wood until resins were developed. Now various synthetic materials are as common as traditional media. Were these mistakes?
AI represents simply another evolutionary step. Even if we resist it, it won’t disappear. It’s like mobile phones—virtually nonexistent in the 1990s, now nearly universal. We adapted and learned to live with them.
The solution lies in learning to leverage AI and navigate its integration into our creative processes. This is easier said than done, but history offers guidance. Printers didn’t eliminate hand made paintings —they evolved together. Similarly, AI and 3D printing won’t replace human creativity—they’ll evolve alongside it. Skills and talent will always be admired and respected. In fact, as these tools become ubiquitous, I believe natural talent and traditional skills may become rarer and therefore more valuable.
If you don’t have much experience, you might be tempted to mix materials. Before you do, read this article—it might save you some serious headaches.
I decided to put theory into practice and explore how I could apply these ideas to my own sculptures using ChatGPT — to see just how far this collaboration could take me.
AI has clearly arrived and is here to stay, creating significant concern across industries, particularly in the creative sector. While we still don’t fully understand its ultimate impact, the capabilities are simply mind-blowing.
This book is essential for learning more about the human figure as it is very complete. Includes proportions based on eight heads ( be aware that we are using 7.5 heads), bone structure explanation, balance and range of movement of the joins. The anatomy applied to the figure is not necessarily as accurate as in the Paul Richer book. This book also includes pictures of models for an applied explanation.
This book is excellent for learning anatomy from a medical perspective applied to art. Here we also find his 7.5 cannon explained. The illustrations are accurate, giving the precise location of muscles, layers and mapping of the human body. This book is used in official academies like the Florence academy.
In this book, Michel Lauricella presents both his artistic and systematic methods for drawing the human body–with drawing techniques from the écorché (showing the musculature underneath the skin) to sketches of models in action. In more than 1,000 illustrations, the human body is shown from a new perspective–from bone structure to musculature, from anatomical detail to the body in motion.
This small, portable book presents a unique perspective on the human body for artists to study and implement in their drawing work. In this book, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella simplifies the human body into basic shapes and forms, offering profound insight for artists of all kinds, sparking the imagination and improving one’s observational abilities. Rather than going the traditional route of memorizing a repertoire of poses, Lauricella instead stresses learning this small collection of forms, which can then be combined and shaped into the more complex and varied forms and postures we see in the living body.
This book provides a simplified and practical vision of the human skeleton to help all artists in their drawing studies. Here you will find the most common and useful approaches to the body’s underlying skeleton and bone structure, which will fuel your imagination and enrich your observational skills as you draw the living form. In this small, portable guide, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella focuses on the essentials you need to know.
This book is excellent for the quality of the drawings; very expressive, fresh and accurate. This book is recommended as a reference for the quality of work we can achieve in the art standards mostly applied to drawing. It is also a good source of images of bodies and living anatomy.
