I just finished a week-long workshop with Dora Natella on portrait sculpture. Dora was one of my favorite sculpture instructors as an undergraduate and post-graduate. This was a rare treat to work with her again because her workshop was at the Brookgreen Gardens. Brookgreen Gardens is one of the largest and finest sculpture gardens in the world. Brookgreen Gardens has an onsite instruction studio and works closely with the National Sculpture Society to sponsor Artists in Residence, workshops, and gallery shows.

The outline of class was:
Day 1: Lecture on the anatomy and proportions of the head. Dora doing a live demonstration of a generic head.
Day 2: Creating a generic head.
Day 3: Modeling a portrait from the model
Day 4: Lecture on sculpting the hands and feet. Modeling time of our choice of hand or foot.
Day 5: Finish modeling portrait from model. Demonstration on how to hollow the clay sculpture in preparation for firing.

This is the final portrait of ‘Donna’ after three days of modeling; two from life.

Here the hand that I modeled after lecture. This is about an hour or two worth of modeling.

In addition to an excellent workshop, I spent my lunches and evenings wandering through the extensive gardens.

And of course, of the hundreds of sculptures on display, I found a lifetime of inspiration.