Ecorche - anatomy study of muscles in clay

 I'm continuing with my self-study, refresher of anatomy. This 1/2 life sized sculpture is being created by layering on the clay as muscles. As I work on the piece, I'm considering the role of the muscle - how round or flat is it? What is the function of the muscle and how does it effect the surface shapes when flexed?

Yes, this is a tedious exercise - and well worth every minute. It's so tempting to stop and go to surface forms, but that would defeat the purpose. Forcing yourself to really place the muscle, with it's origins and insertions, leads to greater understanding of the body....and understanding the body frees you to sculpt with confidence.


Jmac classic clay medium.

Correcting facial proportions in clay

 I'm back in my studio now and working on "A Good Read". Still blocking in the basic musculature and forms. While working, I could see that the lips were too close to the nose, giving too much chin to the face. So I have shown how to fix this problem.

First I took my sharp metal shaper and cut upwards towards the nose to cut the lips off. Then I removed the lips. Next I replaced the lips onto the sculpt only slightly lower.

After the lips are in place, I rolled out a small coil of clay and placed it above the upper lip to fill in the crack. Then I continued sculpting and adding more forms to the clay.

You can see that everything is very rough and that I am not concentrating on any one area. As I work on the piece I'm constantly moving around the and working front, back, side and adding clay as I go to keep the piece moving along.

Revising works in progress - portraits in clay for bronze

I refined the maquette of "The Pageturner". A lot of the work was done listening to the Wendy Woo concert at the CSU Lagoon Concert Series, where I sculpted at the show.

Surprisingly, this clay is also Chavant LeBeau Touche. This clay, however is light in color, which I much prefer to two reasons:
1) It's easier to see the shapes and shadows of forms
2) It doesn't stain everything

This clay was less sticky and responded much better than the terra cotta colored clay that I used for "Waiting on the #9". That leaves me to believe that the clay is quite nice, actually, and I simply must have had a bad batch for that earlier sculpt. This is still a bit soft, but had a much more lovely feel to it. This isn't an exact portrait of my daughter, but rather an impression of her: forever lost in her books and absently playing with her earrings or necklace and simply lovely in her quiet repose.

As you can see, it is quite small, but I rather like her as a tiny piece and may cast her as is and then enlarge to 1/2 life size later.

I also did some more work on the portrait of my daughter in water-based clay. After hollowing out too soon and suffering the consequences, I've got her nearly completed. The clay has firmed up nicely and I will put the finishing touches on her tonight and let dry before firing. This piece is life-sized, using CT3 clay.

Portrait sculpting demo - Daughter

I started a life-sized portrait bust of my daughter this week. Below you will see the progression of where I started and up to this point.

First, I began by by crumpling some newspaper into a ball shape and taping it over a post. Next I added a generous amount of CT3 waterbased clay to form a general starting head shape. Then I made some lines to dived the head into proportion.

After that I began to carve out the eye sockets and refine the head shape and then began blocking the forms of the features.

Once I got that far, I added shapes and continued to refine the shapes. Up until this point I wasn't too concerned with getting a likeness - it was all about forms, shapes and proportions.

 

Now that I've gotten this far, I will let the clay rest a bit, allowing it to firm up. Then I will go back and begin to seriously define the forms, correct any proportion errors that I find and begin honing the likeness.  This portrait is just of 1/2 completed and has used nearly 1 full bag (25lbs) of clay. I will probably need another 1/3 to 1/2 bag of clay to complete the bust.