Learning the art of sculpture.

Because I'm always interested in learning new techniques to apply to my clay arts knowledge,  I decided to try some sculpture. The studio I frequent was offering a session with a local artist, so I signed up. This past Sunday I spent 5 hours learning the "very basics" of sculpting a head and face. My teacher/artist Ron, was very hands on and we worked together on the piece as he explained how to get all the facial features balanced. While he did help a lot, I feel I can claim the overall style of the piece as my own. I think I expected to work more on my own, but the great thing is I had a very nice finished piece after 5 hours. I shaped the head, gave it a little tilt and made the neck nice and long.

We used an anatomical head formed in plaster of paris as our model. Once I got the basic head shape down, he showed me how to make and add all the features and get them correctly positioned ; eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin, forehead. It was a real lesson in facial anatomy.  Ears are definitely the hardest.  He would do one side roughly, and then I would finish and refine it and then add the other side myself. She (my sculpture) had a simple straight forward (no pun intended) expression, which is hard enough by itself. I decided on her hair style and added all the hair myself. I was so happy with the result.

I can't wait to do another one, only all by myself this time, and compare the two. I'll post the pictures soon, so check back again.

More completed projects

While I've been spending as much time as I can in the studio and have completed several pieces in the past six months or so, I've neglected to take pictures. So earlier this week I spend several hours photographing some of my more successful ones.