Portrait Sculpture

There are many ways to approve a sculpture. Some people come to the studio and others work with me through the internet and the phone. The process does include the clients suggestions. After viewing the previous photographs I have some thoughts from the client and I go back and work some more on the sculpture. The one difficulty about creating a sculpture with a quick deadline is that I have no time to be away from the sculpture. Sometimes distance is good. A few days away from a sculpture and many things can be noticed. Here is the most recent version and once again a tracing of the original photograph imposed over the sculpture.

I often say that all I do is copy photographs. Of course when your resources are limited there may be a bit more intuition involved. I have hovered over the sculpture for days. My husband cracks the center of my back regularly and in off hours I try to stand up right avoiding the affects of poor posture caused by hours of sculpting. This is approval time. The photographs are sent to the client in hopes of approval or direction. This is how it looks at 10:44 pm on Sunday evening.

There is much to do. I’ll spend the weekend working on the Hocket sculpture. I hope to send photographs to my client by Tuesday. We are on tight deadline. This is how it looks Saturday morning. I’ll post more through the weekend.

The process of sculpting, for me, does not always stay in the downstairs studio. I have taken the picture of Mr. Hockett upstairs into my husband’s office to work on his graphics tablet. It is a wonderful tablet that allows you to draw right on the tablet. I trace the outline of one of the photographs of Mr. Hockett. Then I transfer that in Photoshop dropping it over the photograph of the sculpture taken from the same direction as the Hockett photograph. This helps me to see some of the corrections.

I find I need to move the nose and eyes down. Instead of resculpting them I opt for carving those areas out and trying to move them down. It is a bit of work, but, much easier than resculpting the entire area. The ears need to be pulled up as well, the shoulders/back raised. Then I take another photograph to see how things are lining up, much better. Getting there. Just a little trick to help me see things that I might not otherwise see. I wish I had a photograph from the side, but am told one might be coming today.

I’ll post the revised sculpture this evening or in the morning. Gentleman that he is he would like to have his hat on before I take the picture.

Bound by deadlines of a memorial service I precede with the sculpture. I cannot control the foundry process, they need the time they need to prepare it, and so I work night and day trying to figure out who this Mr. Hockett is. How much of this process is intuition. I often wonder. Photographs, especially when you only have three, only show so much.

Creating a sculpture with little reference is challenging at best. Often I can capture the likeness in one direction, however when a sculpture is viewed from the side it might not look like the person at all. I have only three photographs of Mr. Hockett- a challenge. The clay has been added to the sculpture and the hat. Florencia works on putting details on the hat, carving in the vents, smoothing the clay and putting the designated texture.

The crockpots that heat up my clay and double boiler holding the wax are both turned on. First time for the new year.

For those of you interested in the process of sculpting here is how we are beginning on this new sculpture commission.

First I searched around for an inexpensive cowboy hat to use with the new commission. It will be covered with wax and clay to thicken it up enough to cast in bronze. I didn’t want to buy a good new expensive one. I Found this hat at Fiesta grocery store.

The armature that I use for this project is purchased from the ceramic store in Houston Texas http://www.ceramicstoreinc.com/.

I covered the armature with a plastic bag and then sprayed some spray foam into the bag. This is the kind that is used for insulation purposes and you can get at Lowes or Home Depot. It is messy to work with and the bag holds it somewhat in place. The next day I have to cut away some of the plastic bag so that the foam can cure. This foam gives me a lightweight structure for the clay. Once the foam is cured I can shape the head, as you see it now. Before I will put clay on this I will coat the entire thing with wax. This is done to keep all of grit from the foam out of my clay. I am a nut about that. I hate gritty clay! Florencia, my apprentice has helped me a great deal with all of this. She has put the put the wax on and the clay.

Now we begin our dance of me coming in the evening and making a mess while I sculpt and she coming in and smoothing out areas of the sculpture and cleaning up after me. Today she asked me, “just what do you do in here at night.” As she was picking up my mess. I guess I am focused and don’t really notice until either I am done for the evening or my tools become buried in scraps of clay.