Just the start of the rough shapes of the cervical vertebrae. A little challenging since I don't have any good life-sized models. Even my anatomy books don't show these vertebrae very well. It's got me thinking now -- maybe Santa will bring me a decent full-sized skeleton for Christmas? 

All this technical work. It's good knowledge to have but is not what I want to do ultimately. I much prefer a sort of 'abstracted realism' approach at this point in my aesthetic sensibility. The other thing about doing technical "copy from sight" exercises is that they lack the kind of generative creativity I crave. Nachmanovitch writes, "Competance that loses a sense of its roots in the playful spirit becomes ensconced in rigid forms of professionalism." Precisely. So I did the following in the spirit of play. I'm calling it "Cheese Doodle In Clay" (no cheese was harmed in the making of this sculpt) --