Figure Sculpting Demo - young dancer in ceramic clay #2

Here is the progress - I've continued to move the sticks around at the form takes shape. The clay continues to sag and slump and I am continually bringing it back up to it's original height.

Next I will begin forming the arms and putting into place.

Stop by today to see the progress in person - I'll be sculpting until 5pm today as part of the Fort Collins Studio Tour!

900 Marble Drive.

Reclining unfinished nude - ceramic clay

This was another 5 hour sculpt done in water-based clay. Sadly - it's the last one for the class. It's about 19" long and 10" wide. In this piece I worked her head "off sculpt" - which means that I cut her head off to hold upright in my hands to sculpt for a bit and then re-attached her head.

"Unfinished" because I'm experimenting with not sculpting 'everything'. Not sure how successful I was in not completing the arm and leg....what do you think?

I was more interested in the negative spaces and openings. I plan on making the base clay that she's lying on very light so that the dark forms and open spaces show up on the nude more.

Took a lot of liberties with this one. I had about 4 hours with the model, but her proportions were very short and rather chunky. At first I started to sculpt her as she was, was then I thought, why? After all, this isn't a commission. So about 3 hours of the sculpting process was capturing the woman before me (she had her hips raised on pillows and her head lower - both arms were up - with hands under her head), I decided to change things - so I lowered her hips to level, turned her head the opposite direction and put one of her arms down. It was too late at this point to give her much more in the way of length. If I were to do it over, I'd take even more liberty and really stretch her out a lot - I think it would please me more.

Anyway - she's currently drying and awaiting firing. Sorry for the photos - I just snapped a few quick shots and they aren't very good ones... (Chestnut water clay cone 6).

In the mean time - I'm happy to say that all my other sculpts fired beautifully. The one sad news was that one fell during the long drive home from Denver and broke her leg. A lot. I'm currently trying to repair it using epoxy compound. We'll see how it does.

Next will be my patina class in May! I'm looking forward to working with the patinas to see the different effects. They will also cover the repairs to the one sculpt with the broken leg. I'll make a post of her repair soon too.

5 hour Clay Portrait Study

Here we have a ceramic clay sculpture portrait study. I did this in one quick session of 2 1/2 hours then another 2 hours without the model at home. I didn't get good photos because I forgot to photo it at home and had to take a quick shot at the class while she was partially dry (which is why the clay is speckled).

As you can see, her strand of hair broke off in transport. She's also a bit flat in the back because I was worried that the clay had gotten too thick and I'm trying to be careful about the thickness of the clay for firing. So if she fires okay - I may be able to repair the strand of hair that broke off. Hope so anyway.....but it's all a learning experience!

Water based Clay Sculpture Figure Study

My wonderful and astute husband, Scott, realizing that I've been feeling creatively stifled, gave me the sculpture class of my choice for Christmas. It was really hard to choose, but decided upon Andi Mascarenas's class offered by the Denver Art Students League. I figured that the longer class schedule would be a good discipline for me. The first class was Wednesday, with Andi teaching. On Fridays we have open studio time. We started the class with 10-20 minute gesture poses to warm up and then started a longer pose. This sculpture is about 4 hours of work. The sticks are wooden skewers that are helping to support the water-based clay while the sculpture dries a bit. When it's leather-hard, I'll remove the sticks and hollow her out a bit, repair the holes and let her dry slowly - but first I'll put some more work into her.

I no longer have access to the model or the pose, and the sculpture is intended as a study only, however I feel I can do some more work on her from my memory and will post newer (and hopefully better lit photos!) in the next week. This sculpture is 11" from base to top of head.