John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now of course we need raw materials .. tools ... and all that good stuff.

I had ordered a few bricks of Plasticine from my local Art supply store, they didn't have it in stock, but were happy to have some sent down from one of their other stores. Although they only had three bricks in stock .... better than nothing I guess ... Order given.

Now these are two pound bricks ... not cheap 12.95 each about the size of a coffee mug and as hard as a piece of wood ... wonderfull.

My tools I've pick up along the way .. most of them came in a two sets. One all wood set that was around 10 dollars and a double ended metal set that was 20 dollars and I had a couple of larger metal ended ones tat ran me around 10 dollars each.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now for a support ... called an Armature in sculpting terms ... which is the skeleton so to speak of the sculpture.

With many clays that are softer there is a very important need for a solid Amature to prevent the clay from slumping ... or sagging from it's original position.

Also when clay's expensive, one can save a lot of money by building up the scuplture out of other objects them covering and finishing it with a thin layer of clay.

The plasticine clay that I've purchased doesn't have any issues with slumping ... as I've stated ... it's as hard as an actual brick, so I did a very basic armature just to be on the safe side to support the waterfall that the bear will be positioned on.

First I bolted an angle iron to a left over piece of oak railing. From beneath so I could detach the sulpture from the base when finished. I then rummaged through some junk out in my garage and found an old rusty chainsaw file and bent the tip into one of the angle iron holes. Then wraped things up with a piece of coat hanger wire. Going al the way up the file to help give the clay something rougher to hold solidly on to. I then bent the ninety degree angle iron to approximately what I though looked right for the waterfall's position.

Maybe I should just stop now and call my fancy smancy Armature a work of art and be done with it ... nah ... let's trudge onwards.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now on to the next problem ...

The plasticine .. is hard as a brick.

The company's website states that the harder medium and hard grade of this particular plasticine can be heated up to make it more workable. They state the temperature to warm it to as 105 degrees ... hmmm ... think John think ... THE OVEN !!!

Except that the oven starts at 150 on it's lowest setting ... No biggy .... I'll watch it to make sure things work out fine.

So I place a brick in an aluminum pie tray and plop it in there .... wait for a bit and check on it ... still pretty hard ... impatient ... turns up oven up to 200 .... waits another few minutes ... pokes brick with finger ... OUCH ... yup it's starting to melt.

So I take it out and head to the living room.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

So now I start pulling off the softer outer edges of the brick ... avoiding the bottom where it actually liquified some until it had cooled a little.

The clay cools off fast actually and returns to a very hard solid state, so repeated trips to the oven were needed to reheat it as I built up the Maquette (model). I eventually turned it up to 250 even to speed things up.

As you can see I'm fleshing out the waterfall.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

now I'm adding to build up the bear's body.

Slow and steady.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now the Bear's taking shape.

The back end needs more clay to fill out the buttocks ...

Needed a drink .. sculpting's thirsty work.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

the front

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

The other side

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

In the next three I've added the roughed out salmon and filled out the bears's body to make it look more bulky and powerful looking.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

the opposite side

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

and of course the front

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now that I've bulked him up ... I'm going to smooth things out a bit.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

un huh ....

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

the front

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Now that I'd smoothed the sculpture out. I had to figure out in what style I wished to finish it.

I looked through some of my art magazines that had featured sculptors in the past and already had an idea of a few of my personal favourite sculptor's signature styles in my head as options. I'd considered trying a realist approach, but in my opinion ... as beautiful and acurate as it may be .. it's been done to death.

So I narrowed it down to two of my favorites.

Rosetta

http://www.rosettasculpture.com/

Her style is described as hard-edged yet soft, sensitive yet powerful. It's unique hard-edged yet fluid. Very beautiful in my opinion.

and

Bart Walters

http://www.bartwalter.com/

His style is very loose, but captures the subject perfectly I think. He builds up his models with strips of clay that you can see layered upon each other. His statues almost look like animals without skin ... like you see the muscle structure and movement rather than fur or feathers. Again very original ...

Not so original for me to be copying .. but hey .. I'll find my style .. eventually ... right ?

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Well ..... did you guess which style I'd use ?

Since I'd already built up and smoothed down the body ... it would have been a bit difficult to pull off Bart Walter's style with animals created by adding thin layers of clay to build it up.

So that left the hard, fluid style of Rosetta.

So here's the last photo's I'll have before the weekend. I'll work more on it within the next few days and post my advancements next week.

There's still a lot to be done on this piece.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

the opposite side.

Ohhh ... and I will add the salmon back after I recarve it in the proper style.

John Houle 01 Sep 2006

Oh and for measurements ...

From the tip of the bear's nose to the end of the waterfall it measures 12.5" / 31.25cm

The height from the top of the oak base to the top of the bear's rump is 7.5" / 18.75cm

and the width of the waterfall at the base is 4.25" / 10.5cm

Have a great weekend folks

Later

Karen Godin 01 Sep 2006

Wow, John - thanks for leading us through that fascinating process! The results are impressive so far... (not that I'm surprised...you're a talented guy!)

Very cool!

Wendy Bandurski-Miller 01 Sep 2006

damm!! that was beary cool

i really got a great idea with your walk through how you create....

i am rather impressed........ i LIKE that bear....... and i am glad you didn't opt for realism....

wonder what it would be like to take that idea and PAINT your sculpture now???? i think you should......

i REALLY think you should bear the idea some thought....