Clay Over Resined Helmet?

[cgspartan]

While I'm not absolutely positive on this, I don't think the clay will be re-usable as it seems it would have paint/clear coat chips in it (just seems like it would make it hard to work with later). Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

there's a couple different ways to deal with that, you could just peel it off if your sculpt is still pretty much intact after molding, or you could melt down the clay and pour it through a screen to strain out the particles of clearcoat. I've never done this with clearcoat so i can't say for certain, but this is how i get small bits of plaster out of oil clay, should work.
You lose a little bit of clay regardless. but the whole point of oil clay is that it IS reusable, it'd be kind of pointless if you had to buy hundreds of dollars worth of clay for every single project.

 

[Privateer]

The last cast I did I just scraped off the paint and threw it in the bin. Your not talking eggshell thickness it only takes a very light coat to seal the clay.

Cheers!

 

[DYSTORTED INC]

I would deffinately seal it with primer, it seams to adhere better to me. Also, If your adding a lot of detail or a large area of clay, may i suggest using a hard clay instead of the popular medium. I've ran into problems where my sculpt gets bumped or if you lay it down for a few days it will have some flat spots. Also when working on a piece, finger indentions are a pain in the arse. The hard clay should cut down on a lot of this and you can get minut details since it will hold shape better. Just my two cents.