This track of progression will be a little new to me, as I don't usually photograph my work indoors or before it's completed. My photog skills are still a work in progress too!
Ok, so onto the work! I don't want to get too detailed with the description of this piece just yet as it's a personal gift for someone, so forgive my lack on background info to start.
This is a German Shepherd Dog and the finished work will be aprox. 8" long by about 4 inches high or so. I'll have to get some better measurements- I'm just eyeballing it.
Since I didn't think to begin the progression shots from the beginning, I'll 'type' you through the steps up until this point. First I built an armature base using newspaper and wire for the bulk of the body. Polymer clay doesn't fire up well in big hunks. You'd have to bake it a pretty long time and the end result would be surface burning and cracking. I think it would probably effect the strength/durability integrity of the clay as well.
Next, I began covering the body with clay piece by piece. I don't use a pasta machine to roll out the clay to a certain thickness to cover the whole thing in one fell swoop. All my work is done by eye and hand because in nature you'll find A LOT of variations- nothing is ever perfectly symmetrical. 'Least that's the way I see it.
After everything is covered I drop in the limbs and finally begin work on the head. The eye and ear positions are extremely important as they lend themselves well to exhibiting personality. After I'm satisfied with head position I begin placing bulk fur around the neck and back and add some texture, which is where the photo progression starts.
In my next move this fellow will be getting a little more bulk fur and some other details I'll show in the next post.
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1 comment:
It was really interesting/fun to see the progression of your work. Which is amazing by the way. Also offered a better perspective (for me anyway) on the size of the sculpture. For some reason I thought they were tiny. Happy New Year!
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