Cast No. 01!

One more snippet:

annnnnd here is the plenary plaster person from the previous post.

And a couple details:

And that's it for this particular venture.  It may receive a patina in the future, though I'm thinking it's unlikely that it'll be anything other than more white.  I also might post some of the shots of the clay iteration at some point.

More on the way, the person in process right now is looking promising, and there's plenty of sketchbook to share.

Yes.

Plaster!

So here I have a little preview of my fist foray into casting:

These are all I'm going to share for now, unfortunately the rest of the pictures didn't come out so hot, so I'm going to have to re-shoot.  Either way the process was interesting.  Put in shim lines (like fault lines) so the mold can come apart, then coat the clay in plaster, break apart the mold, destroy the clay, put the mold back together, fill it with plaster, then chip off the mold.  I wish I had photographed the process a little, it's really beautiful to watch all the plaster chip away.  When you build the mold up off of your sculpture it sort of becomes this hideous blob of plaster, burlap and metal bars (to help give it structure).  You then chip all of that away, and it just sort of falls off, slowly revealing your sculpture underneath.  Next time I'll take more pictures.

Oh, and while I'm at it, here's some more sketchbook to keep things even.

And to leave off, a comment on a hand I sculpted from Leonid Brener when I studied with him over the summer:

"Everybody knows she has five fingers, find something more interesting to say."

Sketchbook Backlog

So, since I've been at the Art Students League I've been commuting every day.  Nearly two hours of train riding every day, some New Jersey Transit some MTA.  The result of all this time spent on a train is that I have about four hundred pages (slightly more actually) of train related sketchbooking to share.  So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some sleeping bankers, reading investors, texters and space starers:

Initially it was purely a ballpoint and brush pen affair, but it has since migrated (marked by the death of my beloved S.K.B. and the complete lack of effort to replace it) over to a more diverse collection of things.  Most recently colored pencils and a calligraphy marker

There will be more of this.

Rob

Some thoughts on centaurs ... and a couple more naked clay people, sorry I lied

So first, consider your average, normal if there can be such a thing, Centaur:

smug bastard

We can see a very specific proportion of horse to human.  Human from head to somewhere around the pubis and horse from somewhere around the clavicle through the remainder of the horse.  This brings us to a much less popular mythological creature - the Anti-Centaur:

"WHY DO I EXIST, THIS IS HORRIBLE,
 WHY DID YOU EVEN IMAGINE ME?"

On a separate note entirely, due to time constraints I wasn't able to cast any of these sculptures before the studios had to be cleared out. As a result they all had to be destroyed which I knew from the start and figured if I'm going to do it, might as well have some fun with it.  Here is some of said fun.

Oh, and here are a couple detail shots that I forgot to include yesterday:

Naked Clay People, as promised:

So here's the final round of naked clay people for now, sculpture number 4.  At this point I'll have to make more naked clay people before I can post any more of them...

And that was the conclusion of the first stretch of figure sculpting.  More other stuff on the way, more naked clay people eventually most likely.

More Figure Sculpture

So, here's some more of this. We have the third attempt, which is more of a sketch - as the time allotted was much shorter than all the others.

My favorite parts are as follows: I like the way his hand drops off into the lump he's sitting on. I also like that he looks like a very stern, naked, news anchor.

More soon, really.

Rob

Figure Sculpture!

So I've wanted to try figure sculpting for some time now but have never had both the time and the opportunity at the same time. Recently however things have come together and I'm sculpting from a real live human at the Art Students League of New York, and it's fantastic! These here are shots of my second attempt, which could use some more work, but the pose is over - on to better things.

And I was wondering if I could get some opinions on this: I like the academic work I do, and I like to share it, but it feels pretty mismatched with the general content that I have here... how do the humans that look at my business feel about it? Do you guys like the more academic "Look! I'm painting!" "Look! I'm sculpting!" is it preferable that it go by the wayside, or maybe somewhere else. Thoughts? Opinions? Irrelevant statements?

Depending on the consensus, there will be more paintings and sculptures shortly.

Oh, and just for kicks here's a couple shots of attempt No. 01 at this whole figure sculpting bit:

That's all for now.