@aristotle
@aristotle
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@aristotle
I don't have any advice on this, but I wanted to just chime in and say I like the piece. It reminds me of some of the tutorial work by Amelia Rowcroft. I haven't taken any of her courses, but they seem to be very good.
@brandonstudio
Yes! I used her reference pics!!
Dan Schofield
Hello all Here is ‘Jesse 233’, my second sculpture and my entry for the Proko Cheap Sculpture Challenge. Although I suspect I fell at the ‘cheap’ hurdle, as I bought 2lbs of Chavant Medium for £17.49 (or $24.30 equivalent). Other than that, I already had (from my first sculpture) some aluminum wire, flower wire, pliers, Milliput original, and a wooden block, for making the armature. For reference the set of six miniature pliers was £13.99. For tools, again, I already had a homemade rake (a pedicure baton with a 24-gauge nickel wound guitar string offcut attached), and I supplemented this with a crappy plastic handle, metal end dental tool (although I do have some dental tools bought specifically for sculpture, in the spirit of the challenge, this was just lying around at home.) All in then, the ‘from scratch cost’ is probably around $50. I made the armature using the simple mannikin frame drawings on page 40 of Loomis’ Figure Drawing book if you know it, which gave me an 11cm skeleton, slightly larger than the 75mm I sculpted at before. I made many, many errors (procedural and structural) in my first sculpture (you can see it on my Instagram @fairygrot). Since then I have learnt more about sculpture and I wanted to focus on two of these fundamental learnings, also referenced by Andrew so far on this course. 1. Getting the pelvis and rib cage right. 2. Focusing on contours (as opposed to internal information). Having the rotational pose photos was incredible. I really tried not to get sucked into internal anatomical detail I knew was there but couldn’t see on the contour. I only started adding some internal volume in the last couple of sculpting sessions. I also didn’t get bogged down in refining. I tried. But then I discovered that my tools just dragged the clay where I didn’t want it (very different to the polymer clay I used for my first sculpture). So early on I dropped the tools, and gave myself a goal of only using my fingers (the face of my pinky finger nail ended up making a much better shaping and smoothing tool than the dental tool). I therefore only used my home-made tool in the last session for trying out some raking across the chest, abdomen and thighs. Everything else is with fingers. This was done over five or six sessions, including one for making the armature, of between one and three hours. Ten to fifteen hours all in I think. My girlfriend ‘suggested’ I stop at this stage (i.e. she banned me from continuing), which I think is the right decision. I wanted to do something more gestural and loose and, despite this taking 5x longer than it probably should, I am happy with the outcome. Sorry for the waffle but, given the audience, I hope you found it interesting. Good luck with the challenge, all! Dan
@aristotle
3yr
Congrats on the win--well deserved!!
@aristotle
Very nice! I haven't tried digital sculpting yet. Do you find that the skills you gain in digital transfer to traditional, and the reverse?
Richard Husky
That’s a good question Aristotle! Really have not given much thought to it. So, forgive me, I’m not quite sure how to answer. However, I would probably lean toward the reverse that it is better to learn traditional then move to digital (maybe I can get a little kick back from Mr. Keith for my plug). Seriously though, with traditional there is no undo function. Symmetry algorithms save you from sculpting the same thing twice…etc…Coming from traditional preps you for methods of construction, helps you understand the forms and structure. All the computer does (once you learn program) is simplify the process. Hope that helps!
@brandonstudio
Well, I had a go at the challenge, it was fun. I think i might take this one further and push the details as I love the pose!
@aristotle
3yr
Very nice! If you do decide to take this further, as you mentioned, you should be sure to upload those photos too.
@aristotle
I want to practice sculpting heads, and I was hoping to find some good references of the same person from multiple angles. Do any of you have recommendations? Posespace seems to work okay, but seems geared more toward figurative work. I just wondered if there were some options that I was missing. In the past I have tried to use celebrities, since it is easy to find lots of photos of them, but something with all the photos gathered together, with photos from all angles would be great. Any thoughts? It seems to me that there could be room for a crowd-sourced collection of free artist reference here (especially if we are just looking at portraits, since people would be more willing to put up their face online than nudes), but I don't know of anything like this. If 20 sculptors took photos of three friends each, we would have a nice start to a collection.
Wayne Lam
Funny my 20 years old wire stand I made but never get to finish, so using an old stand, foil and a 2 inches wooden shim from picture framing. Here is the head and upper body study.
@aristotle
3yr
Nice work. The shim is an interesting tool. It look like it helps keep you focused on main forms--a bit like a rough rake, maybe. I have a bad habit of trying to get a smooth finish too early, before the forms are worked out.
@kobile
Hi, was able to "finish" it on time, thank you very much Andrew! Crits are welcome :) kobi
@aristotle
3yr
Very nice! I like the way it seems to just emerge from the block of clay.
David Marteney
Here’s my submission. I’ve never really done any kind of sculpture before, but I really enjoyed the process. Only tools I used were my fingers and some bent wire, which you can see in the pictures.
@aristotle
3yr
Very dynamic. Great work!
@samy_art21
My entry for the cheap sculpture challenge: First time doing a sculpture with a block of air dry clay! It was pretty difficult! Used a spare brush, palette knife and paperclips, totalling less than 5$!
@aristotle
3yr
Nice work, and bonus points for getting an awesome shadow from it on the wall behind.
@aristotle
Here is a face that I based, especially in the early stages, on Jesse. I began with the profile, and I tried to really get Jesse's basic profile. After I had that, I tried to work without the photo reference as much, exploring the shape of the face and the features in ways that I thought was interesting. I probably would have learned more by being more faithful to the references the whole time, but I enjoyed working in something of a hybrid way. Is this a bad way to use reference materials, in this sort of hybrid way? I didn't used an armature for this--it is solid clay. I used a cheap clay that comes in multi-colored bars, which I kneaded together. The clay was a little over $2 a pound, but I used less than half of that. (I gave some thoughts on the clay in another post in this thread for a torso I did, so I won't repeat that here.) For tools, I used a paperclip, which I mangled a little bit so that I had loops of slightly different sizes and shapes. I also used a tooth pick. I broke it in half by accident, half way through sculpting, but then realized that the broken off end has its uses as well.
@aristotle
3yr
I hadn't really thought of that, but I think you are right. Cavill's head has a kind of blockiness, which I think I naturally tend to produce when I move away from my references.
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