Back in the studio after a long hiatus. Feels good to be working again. I've had ideas flying every which way, but where to start? So easy being in school, where you're assigned a project and have a purpose to do it (namely, to show it to the teacher and get that approval checkmark). But on your own is different. Nobody's waiting to see anything. Nobody tells you what to do.
I went back to the studio with the sole purpose of enjoying my time there. Last year I'd gotten so caught up in the stress of production and impossibly high expectations of myself, I really did myself in. I needed the hiatus. Needed the time to get my mind calmed down again and approach what I love in just that way -- with the aim to really love it. And so far it seems to be working! I'm just there to do what I love. Whatever that is.. (me and my many interests..)
Currently, I'm working on a mastercopy of a Marin sculpture. I've never done a sculpture mastercopy before. Not even sure there IS such a practice. But this kind of thing works great in drawing and painting -- why not sculpture, too? I futzed around for a week or so, trying to sculpt a half-face (just front of the head) on a board, but this quickly proved to be less than ideal. I had to hold the board up with my left hand and try to sculpt with my right. I should know better (and I do). It wasn't long before I scrapped that idea and made myself a proper adjustable-height sculpting table, and started a new sculpture on a proper armature. But see... this is the thing about working on my own. I really don't know for sure if I'm using the proper armature. I mean, it's working okay for now, but I have no idea if there's a better approach out there that sculpture professionals know about. Probably is, but I gotta work with what I have (which doesn't include many sculpture classes or knowledge).
So here it is. The first stages of the sculpture. I decided to start from the ground up. In this case, to start by sculpting a skull. That way I would have the proportions figured out in advance, plus I'd learn some valuable stuff about anatomy.
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It's rough, as you can see. Lots of proportions are out of whack, but this is "in progress". Still a lot of work to do on it. Besides, I don't want to spend weeks meticulously sculpting a perfect skull. I just wanted to get the basic major bony structures in place and then build the face from there.
One of the problems about doing a sculpture mastercopy (or at least how I'm going about it) is that I have only a single photograph of the sculpture I'm trying to emulate. A two-dimensional picture, which lacks almost all the things that sculpture is all about. I can't turn it sideways to check for depth... can't wheel my table around it to get a sense of the fullness. It's a FLAT PICTURE and I'm trying to extrapolate what a three-dimensional version of it would look like. Not so easy to do! That's another reason why I figured it'd be helpful to start with a skull (I have a skull model in the studio, so had a three-dimensional object to sculpt from).
I think, too, it would be helpful to lay a piece of tracing paper over the image I'm trying to sculpt and work out what the anatomy would be. I'll get that going tomorrow.
