Category Archives: Sculpture

Godfrey

This was a portrait that I never really seemed to get into the groove with.  I missed some sessions because I was traveling for work.  And the there were holidays.  I usually start with drawings, but since my schedule was I erratic, I did some drawings, a few quick water colors and a sketch portrait sculpture. 

Some of the sketches turned out well though.  When I starting a sculpture, I will draw the model from multiple angles.  Not only I do I get more practice at ‘seeing’ the model, but I can also get a better sense of form.  Once I create a sculpture, I will often go back to these original drawings for reference.  In the drawing below I also did an anatomy drawing to better interpret what ‘all those bumps and shadows’ were. 

All of these sketches are intended to help me understand what I am looking at.  As such they are focused on planes and form, rather than line or tone.

In these drawing and painting sketches you can see what the entire pose was.  As I mentioned previously, I didn’t have time to put together the whole figure, so a portrait sketch is where I wrapped it up.

A quick portrait

Day 2 of this pose.  Really, I only managed to spend a couple of hours on it.  Having done the prelim art sketches last week helped a lot.  However, it was really only in the last 20 minutes or so that I started to get into the groove… And then it was time to be done.

  
I’m starting to get a little more familiar with this wax.  It really is about keeping it as cool as possible–and yet still workable.  Everything just goes to mush once you have overheated the model, the tool or both.

Pictured you can see some of the tools I am using.  Alcohol lamp, steel tools (not unlike dentist picks), a lighter for the lamp, and a very porous sanding sponge. Still haven’t gotten the hang of hot sanding.  As mentioned above, it is very easy to overheat and then you just smear the surface rather than finish it.

I will probably work on this one a little further to smooth the forms and just practice the finer finishing.

An Afternoon with the Greeks

Last Sunday, I got the rare privilege of going to an art museum by myself.  I spent a couple of hours checking out the closing day of the Portland Art Museum’s show, ‘The Body Beautiful‘.

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It is always a bit of a quandary when ‘headliner’ art exhibits such as this come to town.  They are usually packed with people elbow-to-elbow, the exhibition space is usually quite small, the information and guidebooks provided about the art is usually superficial and biased towards the perspective of art historians (rather than the cultural or artistic significance of work).

But it is also an amazing opportunity to see how people from a cross-section of life interact with art.  Most of the visitors are there because they heard, ‘this is real art–it’s important’.  Some visitors walk by, read the plaque, and walk on, noting that they can scratch ‘see Greek sculpture’ off their bucket list.  However, a few are struck by one piece or another.  And you realize that the appreciation for a particular work or artist has just extended another generation.  And that a string of those moments for over two thousand years is why these sculptures remain relevant today.  There is something visceral about this art that resonates with people regardless of their age, generation, or culture.

greek_sculpture_1 greek_sculpture_2

And then, of course, there is my own personal reaction to these works.  It is this art that inspired me to create art in the first place, and it is that moment of connection that we feel when ancient works that keeps be focused on figurative work to this day.  Below are some sketches that I drew from some particularly inspiring sculptures.

Sketches of Greek Sculpture

I was immediately struck by the resemblance of these particular sculptures to Degas’ dancers and bathers, created over 2000 years later.

degas_dancer
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

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Woman Getting Out of the Bath, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Comments welcome

Portrait Sculpture – Faire

This is my most recent clay portrait.  I did the modeling last fall during the DIVA Open Studios Tour over a period of two weekends.  People came to visit my studio and watch me work with the model. Faire was a great model, and very generous with her time.  I spent the rest of the winter finishing it, just firing it a few months ago.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

One of my popular posts is how I hollow a clay model in preparation for firing.  I have updated that post with in-progress pictures from Faire. You can see more of my portrait work here. As always, comments welcome.

Open Studio Tour

The event is finally upon us.  I will be hosting an Open Studio as part of the DIVA Open Studio Tours over the next two weekends.  My studio will be open Saturday and Sunday, on October 16, 17, 23 and 24, from 11 AM to 5 PM.  I will have models posing for portraits each day.  During the mornings from 11-2, I will having a model posing for a portrait sculpture for the four continuous sessions.  Visitors will be able to watch me create a portrait from beginning to end and ask questions about the process.  In the afternoons 2-5, I will have a different model each day posing for portrait drawings.

For fellow artists, I welcome you to join me for drawing or painting portraits from the model.  Bring your own pencil!  Send me an email if you are interested in joining me.

In case you missed it, my latest sculpture, ‘Dawn of Man’ on display at the DIVA gallery downtown through the end of October.

Looking forward to seeing those of you in town this weekend!

Tutorial: Hollowing a clay model for firing

I thought some people would be interested in seeing how I prepare a clay model for firing.  Here are two sculptures that I recently completed.


Above is a life-size half-torso. It’s 25″ tall, made of clay, which means that it weighed a lot when completed. I didn’t put it on a scale, but it probably weighed ~80 pounds and took two people to move it. The crack at the top of the head is due to ‘slumping’. The clay compressed, and the armature pipe inside did not, causing the top of the head to pop off while drying. This was easily fixed during the reassembly process below.

Above is a much more modest sculpture was a life-size portrait.  I didn’t weigh it either, but it was probably ~40-50 pounds of clay.
As you can see, the hair was fairly detailed on the side, so slicing vertically was going to cause me some rework.

In general, the process is simple:
1. Cut the piece into manageable chunks,
2. Hollow out each piece
3. Reassemble the model, obfuscating any evidence of the repair(s).

As in most things, the devil is in the details.

These are the tools I used:
– Medium loop tool
– Large loop tool
– Sponge
– Modeling tool
– Butter knife (my favorite modeling tool)
– Clay wire

Beth Cavener Stichter mentioned that she spends 1/8 her time modeling and the remaining 7/8 trying to preserve it. That has certainly been my experience. And through the process of preservation, there are plenty of opportunities for the model to be destroyed. Clay teaches detachment. I started this post because there was no guarantee that these pieces would survive the process, and I thought it would be useful to share the process.

For those unfamiliar with working with water-based clay, some important points:
– By design, clay is soft which means that to build a large piece you need to build an armature to support your model and/or build slowly, letting the inner core dry and become more substantial as you build. Otherwise it will ‘slump’ causing the model to compress and collapse. For instance, Rodin did most of his sculpting in clay, and built on top of a cone of clay for support. In Rodin’s “Balzac”, the structural pyramid is clearly visible in the finished piece. Armatures for water-based clay need to be as simple as possible, in contrast to armatures for oil-based clays, because you have to figure out how you are going to remove it from the model later. For oil-based clays, you don’t have to worry about that, so you make the armature as detailed as possible to minimize the amount of clay you need to use, and have the entire piece be as structurally strong as possible. For this clay model, I used a 24″ 3/4″ threaded rod into a pipe flange, with a 3/4″ “T” pipe fitting on top. It’s simple, works great, and is easy to remove. If you aren’t paying attention though, slumping can be a minor issue, as I’ll share later.
– If you are going to make a mold of a piece and cast it later, you can make your mold right on the clay as-is and be done with it. Often the clay model is destroyed in the process of molding. However, if you plan on the final product being the clay version, you will have to take some preparatory steps for firing it. Most important: hollowing. Clay must be reduced so that no part of it is greater than 3/4″ thick. Thicker than that, and it has a tendency to crack during the firing process. It is also more likely that there will be trapped air in the clay, which can cause the piece to explode during firing. Yes–explode.
– Clay can shrink by as much as 20% as it dries. If it dries unevenly, this can lead to cracks. These cracks can be superficial or structural. A piece can be completely destroyed during the drying process. This is rare though if you are paying attention and monitoring the drying process closely. You can affect the rate a piece dries by covering it with plastic, ventilating the plastic with progressively larger holes, eventually exposing it completely. To slow the drying down, you can spray the piece with water. This is particularly important if the piece has thin sections like arms and legs as those will dry faster than the thicker torso. Again, the entire model needs to dry at a consistent rate, or cracks will occur.

The first cut is the hardest. I spend several minutes planning how many sections I am going to cut the piece into and where I will make the cuts. The goal is to minimize the number of sections (and resulting repairs) and make cuts that are easy to repair. Broad surfaces are easier to repair than complex detail. The joins also need to be structurally solid, so you need to consider whether or not the lower joins will be able to bear the weight of the upper joins. Below you can see that I’ve performed a lobotomy, and cut just below the chin. You can also see the newspaper that I’ve wrapped around the “T” fitting, to add mass to the interior. Both the newspaper and the fitting will be removed.

For the male figure, I went with all horizontal slices so that the reassembly would be simpler.  I decided to cut off the shoulders, flipped them over, and hollow them out like a bowl. You can see that the head and cranium have already been hollowed out. The armature is now clearly visible.

When I’m hollowing a portrait, I can usually get away with a single vertical slice either in front of, or behind, the ears.   Notice that I’ve laid the pieces onto a large foam pad to protect the modeling.

My detailed description of how to reassemble:
1. Hollow the each section so that no section is more than 3/4″ thick.
2. Use a fork to pierce the interior surface. I cover the interior with piercings approx. 1/2″ apart to roughly to 1/2 the depth of the wall. This reduces the likelihood of trapped air and creates more surface area for the interior of the model to dry with.

3. Score both sides of join. I use cuts ~1/8″ apart and ~1/16″ deep. They are just random scores, but my intent in sharing is the measurements is to show that the more scoring the better. The purpose of scoring is to maximize the surface area of the join, allowing the repair to be structurally sound.
4. Paint both scored sides with clay slip. Use either a brush or sponge.
5. Join the two pieces. Press firmly, making sure that the slip presses into the scores and the pieces are joined as tightly together as possible.
6. ‘Stitch’ the join together, pulling clay from one edge to another. This may be an unnecessary step, but I’m not taking any chances.
7. With a small loop tool, carve out a channel across the entire seam.
8. Using coiled clay, fill in the the stitches and the channel, across the seam.

9. Using the same modeling tools that you created the final surface prior to hollowing, redo your finish, blending with the other modeling, so that the seam is invisible.

Voila! Now the piece was ready to finish drying. This usually takes a couple of weeks. Once it is completely dried, you can fire it for the first time.
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Anatomy – Foot Sculpture

I completed this anatomical foot over the weekend. It’s life-size. This was actually a lot of fun, and only took about four hours. It was really good practice, and a great refresher course.

I’ve been wanting to collect some plaster casts for drawing for some time now. I finally realized, ‘Why buy casts? I can just make as good or better myself?’. I’ll get more sculpture practice and I’ll save a ton of money.



— Posted from my iPhone


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