The posts for this blog will get fewer now that we are knee-deep in the clay. Our job is to take that foam armature and make it look like a man holding a blueprint in his lap. Slowly we cover the armature with clay. It does not look like much now, but it will later. That is a significant hint to give students. Many don't work on their work until it is complete. They get upset that it does not look like they want and walk away. It is essential to keep up with art no matter what. If you have to walk away for a moment, that is fine but don't abandon it. Push yourself to keep going and get another point of view if you need to. You can always tell the artwork is created with this hint in mind.
I'll be like an acrobat working on different parts, crawling under and on top. At one point, I'll even pull the sculpture off the bench to place him on something so we can work on his back. He is heavy with all that clay. It comes along, and I can't wait for you to see the sculpture. We were trying to have the family come before Christmas to approve it, but that is wishful thinking. Thanksgiving and Christmas get in the way with vendors and interns and working. We plan to schedule this in January.
I still need to work on the blueprint—more posts in the new year.
When I begin to work on the head, I always cut it off with the body. So, even though "off with their head!" is something from Alice in Wonderland, it is a term I always use in my studio. Having a head that I can mount on a pipe makes it easier to sculpt. Knowing I have to de-age the subject- See the previous post; I want everything I can have to make it easy for me to move around the subject. Having his head off does just this.
I only need to get a general look of him. I'll put the head back on and make sure that the body goes with the size head I sculpted. Believe me, sculpting a head to perfection and finding it does not fit a body is a nightmare. I often like to cover up one eye while I work on the other. I will also turn him upside down. This is a trick to fool my brain into seeing things I have not seen. This cloth over one eye makes him look like a pirate. Speaking of pirates, there is a time when I'm working on a commission of a person when I hear the line from the movie "Hook" in my head. Smooshing the face around, the young boy cries, "There you are, Peter Pan. "I say that when I'm sculpting. It is what I call the "aha" moment of sculpting.
Glasses helped. These are not his glasses but ones I purchased that look like his glasses. I'm still waiting to see if the client wants glasses on the sculpture. They can be a challenge in bronze, but we can do it. Meanwhile, the glasses give me a reference to how things relate to other things. Remember, sculpting is all about comparing.—comparing one thing to another.
This head will come off a couple of more times even after it is put on the sculpture.
I give every new intern a shoe. For this sculpture, I borrowed a friend's shoes. Having real 3D objects in front of you when sculpting helps in being able to see the shape. She can’t copy the real shoe exactly, as once again, this is a modern shoe, and we need a shoe from the 60s or 70’s. The artist threads real shoelace into the shoe. I think she is doing an excellent job on the shoes. By the time I have the legs done, we can fit his feet back on him and make sure it looks right, and then she can finish them up.
Students and Teachers
How have shoes changed over the years? Ask your parents if their style of shoes ever changed growing up. Ask your grandparents. Why do you think shoes have changed? What are platform shoes? What are clogs? Where did they come from?
Have you tried to sculpt your shoe? Here is an excellent video of a person sculpting a shoe in water base clay. Notice how his tools help him do what he does. Having the right tool is very important.
Usually, when I’m sculpting, either life-size or monumental, I create something small and 3D scan it to get a 3D model. I can also create something in the computer for a 3D model. We had a couple of strikes against us in the studio with this project. First, one of my main vendors shut down their CNC shop during covid. The other is that all the other vendors are way behind on their projects and using them is cost-prohibitive.
These vendors use CNC or computer-numerically controlled milling to carve out my sculpture in foam. There are two types of foam; one is polystyrene - which they make coffee cups. You know, the tiny white beads all stuck together? The other foam is urethane foam. Each foam has its drawbacks. Polystyrene does not carve well, but it is safer to work with unless you should accidentally put a torch to it or spray paint it. It melts and has dangerous fumes. Urethane foam carves like butter, but you must wear a mask when you carve on urethane foam as it is dusty, and you don’t ever want it to get caught in your eye. Urethane is very, very expensive. It comes in different densities. For example, some you can get that are as hard as wood. We typically work with a less dense urethane, and it is my favorite foam.
ARMATURE AND CLAY
The foam becomes an armature. An armature is a solid structure that holds your clay. This may be a good time to talk about clay. I sculpt in many different types of clay. The one you are most familiar with is a water-based earth clay that you fire in a kiln. You could not use this type of armature with that water-based clay because when you use that type of clay, you have to keep it wet, and it needs something on which it can grab hold. I use clay that I heat up in crockpots and then hardens when it is on. It can stay on an armature for a long time, making it a good clay to use when doing commissions.
Before having the technology of CNC, I used to weld all my armatures. Sometimes, if you were using this clay before CNC, I would use spray foam insulation and then carve that away to get a basic shape. CNC saves me lots of time.
Because of COVID, we were scrambling for a CNC armature, and a friend could slip mine in with his jobs, but it had to be carved in polystyrene. Remember, that is the styrofoam cup type of foam that I do not like. But I was thankful to have any armature.
Here is a video of the carving of the digital technology I used to sculpt the Alice sculpture. Watch at 2:07 in the video, and you will see the March Hare that my vendor cut out of the foam.
Being able to scan a sculpture and make it large or create it in the computer and make it large using cnc saves me a lot of time. Before this, an artist would have to measure one point on a more miniature sculpture, translating that into a larger sculpture. I mention this in my book.
What age would you like your loved one? This is one of the first questions I ask in a sculpture commission. It is essential to know what they expect. There was one commission where the son brought his dad to my studio. The dad was in his late 60's. I took photographs all around the subject. Taking photographs all around helps me to be able to create a sculpture that looks like the subject from all sides. I made an exact likeness, and when I showed the son, he said, "that is not what I want." I showed him the pictures against the artwork, and he said, indeed, I had done my job, but he really wanted an image of his dad as he remembers him.
What?
That is a different story entirely. So, he sent pictures of his dad, my client, and the subject's son was in the photos. He is about 7 or 8 years old in those photographs. I guess we remember our parents at a certain age. and that is what he did. So, I had to de-age the sculpture.
I have studied aging in detail in something called forensic art. It is a fascinating process.
What does that mean? Well, it is a well-known fact that our noses and ears get longer as we age. EWWW what? Yep, it is one of the reasons I don't wear earrings. I don't want anything to pull those ears down any more than gravity and nature will. Watch this video by Marc Brunet about the aging of a face.
Here is a cool piece of art that shows a subject's aging as you walk around it. It is fascinating to watch, and I wish I could see it in person. According to My Modern Met, creating this art is not done digitally but traditional painting but done on strips. The one likeness is painting on one side of the strip and the other on the other side. Fascinating.
For anyone interested in learning Forensic Art the book by Karen Taylor is wonderful.
What type of reference do I need for a subject? In a perfect world, I would have images of my subject all the way around them at the age I am going to sculpt them. That is only possible in a commission where the person is alive, and I have access to them. I would even take photographs from the top and the bottom. In many cases, such as Booker T Washington, I don't have access to them, and I have to count on what I can find, or what the family can send. I have a saying, "You can never have too many references."
Reference is so essential. In the past, sculptors would ask if they could do a plaster cast of their model. If the subject were recently deceased, they would try to do a plaster right after they died to preserve the likeness. The updated version of that would be a 3D scan. I have had my face 3D scanned quite often. The difficulty is that 3D scanners are expensive and not readily available.
Here is a funny thing: I was not sure I was really an artist when I was younger. I could not draw from my head and needed a reference or something in front of me.
My first commission as an artist was actually in kindergarten. My teacher saw some promise in me and asked me to do the Christmas hall bulletin board of Santa and his reindeer. I was excited she noticed, but it brought me to tears, and finally, I admitted to the teacher that I didn't know how reindeer looked enough to draw them. She then said, Oh, I can help with that. I'll get you a picture. This really confused my kindergarten brain. If the teacher had photos of a reindeer, why did she need me?
I have since learned that not only do artists use references, but sometimes they trace things. When I grew up, there were no computers or the internet. Now it is very easy to find just about anything you want. But back then, artists saved pictures in a file cabinet. It was called their artist morgue.
Today, I use Pinterest and put images up on google drive for myself and my interns to use.
Well, it took a long time to get images from the family. I try to be a detective, and if the person is well-known, I can find what I need. Plus, seeing a person's images helps me capture more than a likeness. It is the essence of the spirit of the person that I am after.
As I stated, reference is a big part of creating good art. First, my friend Antwine posed so we could quickly see how tall a seated man would be, that is the approximate height of our subject.
Mr. Tough was 5'10" Next, I posted on my neighborhood Facebook page to look for a man with the same build and height as my subject. That was hard. First, I thought we were doing him much older, and then I received word I should sculpt him in his 50's. I had to have my client define what image they might have that depicts Mr. Tough in his 50's, and we started all over again, looking for another model and creating our reference.
Often when sculpting a deceased loved one, I prefer to have a member of the family pose in the pose if they are about the same height and stature. But things have been going slow with communication, and we need to get going on the project, so I opted for a stranger. I posted on my neighborhood forum to find a man, and neighbors sent me images. I opted for a man younger than 50 and a bit thinner, but we can thicken him up. I'm also noting Mr. Toughs stature or how he should sit or stand. This stature won't change over years, or if it does, it will change only slightly. That is where having lots of reference material for my subject is important.
I set up my model on my bench and took photographs around him, from above and even underneath the bench. These photographs will show me the folds in his suit and how it fits and allow me to refer back to these images for shape and positioning. Here is the thing. If Mr. Tough is in his 50's, his suit would be from that time period. So, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what type of suit he would be in and how the design changed from my model's suit. My model's suit is very tight, so loosening up that suit will be a priority, the suit will have larger lapels and he will wear a wider tie.
I often spend a great deal of time researching clothes, for example, the suit of Booker T Washington, or in the case of my newsboy sculpture, I found a pattern from the period, sewed the outfit, and had my model pose with it on. (FYI, old patterns do not have the same markings as new patterns. This made sewing a bit challenging, but it was fun.)
I'm getting very excited about getting my hands in the clay. Stay tuned.
Teachers and students
How do you think the study of clothing and understanding what people wear at certain times in history relates to what is happening in the world?
What did your parents wear, and how was their clothing different?
Does the style of clothing change? What is your favorite style of clothing from the past?
How have school clothes changed over the years? Did you know there was a time when girls could not wear pants to school and boys had to wear hats or ties? When I sculpted the newsboy, I was surprised to learn about the knickers he wore, and if you wore them above the knee, they meant you were young and below the knee meant you were older. There was even a line in a famous musical about if your son buttoned his knickers below the knee- it was sung as if doing so he would be rebellious. Clothes can say a lot.
