5 posts tagged “figure sculpture”
This is why I have been absent from my post for a few weeks: the latest Figure With Heavy Ball- the ball as metaphor for all the unseen weights borne/perpetuated/imagined/real. I started him the Monday after The Existentialist, and have been working on him and the previous unfinished female figure with heavy ball (she has been a bit of a nemisis...). I think this is the best figure I've created to date, so that implies improvement- which is encouraging. The model is 47 years old, 6'2", 190lbs, shaved bald (E's brother-in-law: sorry ladies, he's taken). Quite a lean and muscular build, which inspired capturing his sense of strength. I took digital photos and created a slide show on the MacBook, then worked from the laptop images- I'll have him over sometime mid-month to work on the face/portrait. This is a half-sized figure, but still large at just over 3' tall, he took about 8 gallons of clay.
This figure languished in the studio through the winter- looking quite a bit different. Yesterday afternoon darkened with storm and felt like twilight. I figured I'd work on him till the rain began. I plunked him down on the gurney and took a look, and actually started getting a steady stream of direction. The rains began in the early evening, and I was done.
Some of the angles feel quiet, that she is in repose with the ball, while at other angles she seems to struggle with it. When moving around the sculpture this dichotomy adds vitality, and she seems animate and vigorous, yet tenuous. It is finally getting near to where I want it. Her face needs more work, as do her arms/hands- but it is close!
I set her up a few days ago to see what would come of her. I have her fairly well back to life, as E took this pose for a bit a few nights back (have yet to get E back into the reclining pose, as we are still putting the house together). I began this pose with photos from a model, it got out of proportion pretty fast as I had taken shots from weird angles. I was going to kill it, but E took the pose for an hour or so back in Utah, and it self-corrected quickly enough. The photos are lost in boxland for now...or maybe forever- the pose had a line of weight attached to the ball she held, so that she was pulling foreward as well as holding the heavy ball. E has just held the ball, and I sometimes forget about the other force line- which was very important to me when I set up the pose originally.
I'm working between pushing anatomy and having it maintain human quality: in other words not flatten it with eggheadedness, yet challenge myself to show a bit more of the underlying structure. I really need to quit fussing over it and pull things apart a bit more.
I'm also looking at how large I can make the ball she holds. There are some constraints of hand placement, and I think I've gotten it about as large as the pose will allow. It is quite a bit bigger than the ball she held, but I still wonder if its visual weight is reading well. I'd like to be able to alter the object/size in multiple castings, but that will be way down the road.
