Review: Sculpt What You Love

SharonV's witch would make a nice sculpture to sculpt a face from. Now
that would be unusual.

There are tricks to sculpting a "usual" face. Without emotion like some old fashioned dolls. From these emotionless faces we make molds. The raw clay face impression can be then given expression because we have the muscle mass and indentations in the places were the face would crease. Like the laugh lines, knitted brows, crows feet at the
edge of the eye. It all can be made to have expression if you start
out with clay bits that are in the shape of muscle.

It seems like cheating sometimes, but good thing I'm not one to feel
guilty of finding a way that's quick, cheap and easy to get a required
effect with polymer clay.

Just like in raising cane, it's only a snake or a sheet. A dot is a
snake and a line is a sheet. Everything in the world can be done with
dots and lines, add blend and loose your dang mind.

Sculpting has it's tricks. Now sculpting "known faces" is sometimes
easier than sculpting something just out of your brain pan. When we
look at Alfred Hitchcock, we know we're going to have to mix a little
more clay to build up the muscles than if we were sculpting Pee Wee
Herman.

Start with the skull. Make a skull mold, another easy breezy way to
attack faces. Which reminds me of a funny caption to a picture. The
picture was of one professional boxer's face making impact with a
boxing glove. The caption read "Boxer A attacks the glove of Boxer B
with his face." But I digress... start with a skull shape.

If you're making 1/76 scale dolls
Biz-Archive/Sculpt/lil-man/Thms.htm

or full sized figures
Biz-Archive/MSAT/ClayArt/WebCam/06-16-03-logFullFace1.htm

you make a skull. Cover it with a sheet of skin clay and start to add
facial muscle. It's all there in the tutes.
http://www.norajean.com/New_Projects/Review-FacesFigures.htm

Here a review the of faces big and small.

But the Kai and Xev face molds. I can't sell them, they were the proof
of a theory I had.
Biz-Archive/LEXX-Home/Kai-Iterations-thm.htm

If you sculpt what you love it ain't work. All the practice, muscle
memory, and grappling with tools are a joy to experience. The effort
to find time, space and resources to clay have to be factored in as
well. After all that ramp up and investment of brain shares and sweat,
for the Love of God pick what you love and sculpt that.
Biz-Archive/Sculpt/NursingMom/Thms.htm

I love the babies.
Biz-Archive/Eggs/EasterEmu/007-1.htm

I love my Kai and Xev molds because they proved the point. You can get
a grip on your clay if you sculpt what you love and follow some common
sense advice... start with a skull, know the anatomy, lay on muscle
without expression or flexing like Ahhhnold. Make the muscles relaxed
first and then pull up a smile, bend a knee, turn a head and look
down. The clay is soft and will yield. The creased you created in
having the real life muscle separation and shape will bend in the most
organic way.

This is the most under utilized polymer clay exclusive sculpting trick
I know of. Can't do that with terra cotta, plaster, wax, or any other
medium. The goosh of polymer clay when it's warm is like nothing else
in responsiveness.

So ClayMates, if you know of any outlet of unusual face molds, let
Juli know. I'm too attached to the symbolism of these particular molds
to even give them away.

The early Demos we filled face molds with animal print cane...Remember
Old Timers?
Here's tropical Kai with Leopard Spot with a blended background,
Biz-Archive/MSAT/ClayArt/WebCam/DemoPix-018d.htm

Yum, I could just bite this picture and taste chocolate.

but I digress

xoxo

NoraJean Gatine
Owner of MSATClayArt

CITY-0-Clay

ClayAlley

First Three Years - Biz-Archive

NJ Archive 1997-1999