Stan the Skeleton moves to my new studio

Art studios are messy places with more stuff than room. Tools, boxes, bags of clay, more bags of clay, kiln, molds, mold-making materials, scales, lights, photo equipment, files and photos, sinks, buckets, sponges, scrapers, wood, plumbing fixtures, hardware, tables, pedestals, works in progress....the list goes on.
So does the moving! I'm STILL in the process of getting my new studio space up and running full time. Finding the right place for everything is a challenge. Today's event was moving 150 pounds of clay and my buddy Stan.
Stan is a life-sized reproduction skeleton (I don't usually keep the real kind around ;-) that hangs around my studio so I can reference the anatomy when I'm working on figurative sculpture.
My family isn't very sad to see Stan go. They were never too keen on coming down to the basement where I was working and running into him. I really should dress him up more for holidays....perhaps this year a Santa hat.
Too bad the car windows are tinted.....could have been fun for the other commuters to see Stan in his seatbelt.

Life sized clay study of Least Bittern Bird

This is a life-sized clay study that I started at Sandy Scott's bird workshop at the Scottdale Artists School.

Sandy and the rest of the class were workin on an Arctic Tern but I chose to go with a closed-wing sculpture as I was going to be taking this back to my studio for further work and needed to be able to easily dismantle from the board and armature and box up as carry-on for my flight back to Colorado. Working with a pose like this made it possible to transport rather easily with minimal damage.

I also chose this bird as it is a wader and I had some ideas for placing it within reeds and wanted to work out my own ideas for casting and basing.

This sculpture measures about 12.5" tip to tail and 5.5 wide and is sculpted in Chavant's Le Beau Touche oil based clay.

Laying in some muscle mass - continuing the work on building the figure

 Sorry I skipped a step - I photographed the last of the skeleton but the photos didn't come out well enough to post. So here I have finished the simple skeleton and have progressed into laying in some of the major muscle masses.

As the finished sculpture is not an ecorche study, I am not concerned with making every muscle with attachments and origins. My goal is to lay in the shapes and forms of the muscles that most effect the surface.

I am using Chavant's Clayette in Hard for the skeleton and hands and Clayette Medium for the muscle mass. I will also use the hard for the face and hair as this is a small scale piece.

You'll notice that the hands look a bit big in the beginning. This is because there is little muscle - mostly bone and tendons in the hands and feet whereas the legs and arms have a lot of muscle and fat. When you strip the figure of a lot of the muscle and fat - the hands will look larger in proportion to the overall figure. As I flesh out the rest of the figure you'll see the hands and feet will look more normal with the larger forms of the legs, arms and body to balance things out.

My husband just walked by and wondered aloud if all this skeleton and muscle work was necessary and wouldn't it be easier and faster just to glob it on? Short answer - yes and no. Sometimes I do just jump straight to large masses (outer form of skin) and quickly set things up. But taking the long road (bones and muscles) does things for a piece of art that just can't be achieved any other way.

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.

Sculpting Portrait demo continued

 Today I worked on the likeness more and finally put some hair on her. The clay is very heavy- there is about 30lbs of wet clay here.

This portrait will need to rest and firm up a bit before I can move on. The next step will be to cut her open and hollow her out. There is so much wet clay that it can't support itself yet.

You need not do too much work on it at this point, because the chances of it getting crushed are quite good. Better to wait until it is leather hard.

So now we wait...

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.

The page-turner - maquette (clay sketch)

I created a new maquette, or clay sketch, today. This little bust has been quickly fleshed out in Jmac Classic Clay and measures about 6" from top of head to bent elbow.

The general inspiration was my daughter, a confirmed bookworm and talented writer. She often looses herself for hours at a time in her books, sometimes absently fiddling with her necklace while absorbed in the story.

The sketch is a quick gesture and I'm in love with pose already. I'll refine this a tad more just because I really want to - I may even take the sketch to bronze in this state before working on it again in a larger size for a more finished version.

The working title for this new sculpture is "The page-turner".

Continuing the rough in of standing figure

This is a continuation of blocking in the standing figure on day 3. I'm using my ipad to take quick photos as I go so the quality of photo isn't very good, especially the lighting.
After I took these photos, I raised up her support bar on the armature stand so I could add some additional clay under her feet. I felt it was too thin, plus I had decided that I wanted to have her wearing flip flops and a dress and needed room to put her shoes. Also the slightly larger base will give the piece more support - both in bronze and also when I ship the soft clay across the country back home to continue working.

I find the darker red clays are a bit more difficult to see the form over the lighter tan clays. Not everyone will agree with me on that, but it's a personal preference.
I made many changes as I worked quickly and didn't have the opportunity to photo those changes. I cut her head off twice to raise and lengthen her neck. It was correct by the proportions of the model, but didn't feel quite right on my piece, for the attitude that I was going to convey. So those changes were quite satisfying to make. When sculpting for yourself, you're quite free to change proportions and faces and hair - something I do quite often. That's not the case for a true portrait, of course, where you need to represent the client accurately. However, as I'm deciding the course of this particular piece it's quite liberating to create her however pleases me. Tomorrow I will post photos of the piece as I've started to sculpt her clothes and  shoes - which I enjoyed tremendously.

Hot Patina on Bronze Ascension

 Nearing the end of the bronze process. The final chased bronze sculpture was attached to a temporary base and washed wshed in a mixture of Potash Sulphurated (also known as Liver of Sulphur).
Then the whole thing was heated in an oven for 20 minutes. Next the patina artist, Chad, layered titanium while and other earth colors and blazed it with a torch.
Once the metal has cooled, it will be sealed with laquer and waxed an attached to the final base made of Nordic Green Granite.I should have photos of the final bronze sculpture soon!