It's the weekend now. I'm going to take a break from sculpting. It's no wonder painting has been the more practiced medium throughout the centuries -- sculpting is HARD ON THE HANDS! At my age, I need to be careful about taking care of my joints, I hate to say. My hands especially, which have been suffering from various incidents of tendonitus and strains and sprains in the last year or two. Yesterday on the internet I found a tool called a "sculptor's thumb". Basically it's a scooped-out thumb-shaped tool that you lay across the padded front of your thumb and cradle in your palm, essentially transferring the force normally exerted on the base joint of the thumb to the center of the palm. I must say, I'm seriously thinking about getting myself one though I'm sure you sacrifice a certain amount of sensitivity to the clay in using it. But for the initial pushing-around of big chunks of clay (especially if it's not thoroughly warmed up yet), it would be a great joint-saver! And it's that joint in particular (the lowest thumb joint, just next to the inside of the wrist) that's starting to bother me with all the sculpting I've been doing.
Thought I'd post some new studio pics. The last ones I posted were back when I still had a lot of my stuff in boxes, but it's all out now and roughly organized. Here's the desk area, where I sit and plan/write/research --
A couple of work tables just next to the window. On the left is the hot plate area, which is currently being used for warming up clay. On the right is the dregs of my last "tinker fest", where I hauled out some of the strange and interesting junk I've been collecting over the last few years and proceeded to deconstruct the items and break them into smaller, more usable elements --
A view of the south wall (note the sculpting table front and center! That's the one I made a few weeks ago). Since this photo was taken I've moved things around here a bit. The shelves on the far right have been moved further right and I've moved all the sculpting stuff into the center of the room so I can walk around the sculpture as I working on it. I've also set up the easel for some drawing, too.
