Back to the Figure

This is one of the first finished sculptures I produced in the class. I think it may have been from our second session. We worked on this pose for around five hours in total from a live model. As you can see the left arm broke off when it was fired and I had to reattach it with gorilla glue, but I have to admit that I do like the character that the crack brings to the figure. Surprisingly this is one of my most successfully glazed pieces. I used a red iron stain on the figure which I then wiped off so it would only remain in the indentations. 

I was a little more successful in defining the back of the figure than the front. At this point we hadn't had a lot of practice working on faces, so you can see that mine is a bit out of proportion and less defined. As are the hands and feet. The model was incredibly skinny, which provided a lot of good musculature and bone indentation to define. When it comes to drawing and sculpting people I always prefer bodies that are a little more extreme. Skinnier, heavier, wrinkled. They just make for more interesting subjects. Beautiful people are just a bit more boring to render, in my opinion. 

It's interesting to me how the mood of the sculpture changes depending on which direction you look at it. Which viewpoint do you like the most out of the top three?

Heads II

                           

I think my second attempt was a great improvement on the first. Though, as you can see, I still need to work on my glazing skills. The proportions and features are much better defined in these, and I added a neckline and the beginning of shoulders which really help to visualize the rest of the figure. Ears also do a lot to contribute to believability, as well as hair and eyebrows as seen in the figure below. These were the only pieces that I did without a model in front of me, so next time I'll post some full bodied figures from live modeling sessions. 

                           

                           

Heads

I recently took a figure sculpting class. I've been wanting to branch out into three dimensions for a while so this seemed like a good option, though it turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. I'd like to share some of my work from the class, starting at the very beginning, so you can see my progress.

Here are two heads that we were assigned to make for homework, without a visual reference. We were taught the basic dimensions of a human head and its features, and told to make something unique. Let the clay do what it wants to, instead of trying to force it to look a particular way. My first attempt ended up looking a bit like Steve Buscemi.

The second head's features got a little muddied when I glazed the pieces. Glazing is a whole new world of difficulty to master. Overall, this was a fun assignment, but I couldn't help being a little disappointed with the outcome. We were eventually given the same assignment again, but I'll save that for another day.