Sculpture: Man

(November 2000)
Although this blog is intended to be about my life in general, I've had requests to post pictures of my sculptures. So things are going to be a little sculpture heavy for the at first.

This sculpture is my second one. You can pretty quickly tell I got further with it then I did on my first one. You can also tell I stuck to the rule of working the core before working the appendages and fiddley bits. I hope you can tell that this was a male model even though he lacks some fiddley bits.

This holding off on the fiddley bits, as it were, would come back to haunt me in a later piece.

I don't remember much about this pose, but it was the second standing pose in a row. Seeing as I was new to the class I assumed all we did was standing posses. As time has passed I've come to realize that it's rare to get a standing pose. Models generally don't like to do them, and the armatures are time consuming and difficult to maintain. For these reasons the day school art program gets priority use of them.

Personally I think it helped a lot to get to do standing posses as my first two poses. It's the only kind of pose were you get to see all around the body. It really helped me learn the forms of the body.

A fun story from this class, which is mixed gender, about half and half, was the women's reaction to the model. The previous model was female, and almost all the women in the class complained the male model was harder to sculpt. I felt this too, but didn't want to express it at the time because certain assumptions about my reasons for stating that would likely be made.

But in my opinion it's very true. The male form is much more difficult. The lines are a lot harsher. Forms don't flow as smoothy. The male body has a much courser appearance. I'm glad the women in the class agreed with me. Also, I have to say, for a variety of reasons, I don't find the male form very interesting.

This is another model were I took the pictures, then scraped the clay off the armature and placed it back in the bins. I think there are at least two more to go before I actually made a permanent one.

Sculpture: First

(October 2000)
Many people know that I've been taking a sculpture coarse for the last few years. Actually I think I'm starting the 6th year. Anyway I've been taking a sculpture coarse through the Toronto District School Boards continuing education general interest program for the last few years. Few people have seen what I've done or know much about the coarse and what I get to create there.

So I thought I'd post a few pictures of different "Works" I've done over the years and describe the different processes involved. I also hope to show progress in my abilities. I think I've improved quite a bit and I'm quite happy with a lot of what I've done.

So with this entry I'm going to start at the beginning and describe the first piece I worked on.

So the first time I took the course was Fall 2000. I'd been wanting to take an art course for a long time, and sculpture sounded very interesting. Although I had done some in my high school art class, I'd never worked with a live model.

The first class was very intimidating. I had no idea what I was doing. All the teacher said at first was, here's a stand, here's an armature, here's the clay. Then a women got up on the small round stage in the middle of the room, drops her robe, and we all start squishing clay on to our armatures. A very odd position to be in for a person who had not been around many/any naked people up to this point in their life.

A little ways into the class the teacher comes out and gives a little more instruction. When I think back I'm surprised how literally I took the teachers instructions. Basically he said, concentrate on the body, don't worry about the limbs, they will come with time. Work on the forms of the body, see how surfaces flow, try to reproduce the volumes. So I concentrated on the body.

The pictures are of the final stage I reached with this sculpture. As you can see it has no arms or legs and only a rudimentary head that's more then a little too small. Also for a sculpture of a woman it has surprising lack of breast. This is because the teacher pointed out, the breast sit on top of the body, don't put them on until the underlying structure is correct.

It took three, three hour classes to get to this point. I'm a bit faster now. I can usually get the breast on by the second class.

I don't know why, but I had no thoughts of wanting a piece to take home with me. After taking these pictures I took all the clay off the armature and returned it to the clay bins. I look at new comers to the class now and most rush to try and get all the details in and want to cast their first piece. I find your skill increases quickly at first in these classes. Saving your first piece is ultimately a discouraging process. It takes a lot of time, and is a very mechanical process. I'm very glad I spent the time to learn the art before spending the time needed to cast a piece. But I'll discuss that process at another time.

This piece of mine wasn't worth keeping, but there was a lot of learning in it. Taking a few pictures of it was the best way of preserving it.

I thought I wasn't going to write so much.

Moving on up...

So I bought a condo in the Spring. I also made the silly move of buying one that wasn't built yet. Silly because now I have to wait... and wait... and wait... for it to finish. So if you can't tell I'm currently in the waiting phase.

Here is a picture of the construction. It is a little old, August 9, 2005. I need to get over there and take some new ones. In this picture they are forming the 33rd floor. About a week ago they reached the 40th floor, the top of the building. My floor is about half way up.

The second picture is what my kitchen will look like. Well actualy it's the mirror image of what my kitchen will look like. Plus I probibly won't have plastic fruit on the counter.

There were only three choices of cabinate colours and this is by far my favorite. The others were a strange olive green in an almost carbon fiber pattern, and the final one was a light blue. I imagine much of the building will be done in the wood grain colour.

The unit I'm getting is a one bedroom plus den that's approximately 700 square feet. The original floor plan had 2 full bathrooms on it. I couldn't imagine why I'd need two full baths. I'm not planning to have guests over so often that sharing a bathroom will be a problem.

So I had the second bathroom removed from the plan. It makes the den much larger, and much more usefull. I also moved the door of the remaining bathroom to the living room wall so it is no longer an on suite, and I moved the bedroom door so the closet could be extended the full width of the bedroom.

I think this will work out well for me. It gives me a lot of useable space in the den, which will be a workroom kind of area. It will allow me to have normal livingroom and bedroom.

But as I said in the beginning, I still have to wait. However I did get my first movin date of early Spring. I'm not expecting that to hold, but it's encouraging.

In the Beginning...

I tend to be a very private person. I've wrestled with the idea of writing a blog for a long time. I like the idea have having a place to record the things I do. I like the idea of having a place where I can direct friends to let them know what I'm up to. I'm a little more tentative about having a completely public display of the events of my life.

I tend not to be much of a writer, I'm more of a visual person. I know some people can write essays every day about the events of their day. If I did that, every day would be an essay about how it took me the whole day to write the essay for that day. I do however enjoy pictures, and I hope to do much of my writing with pictures.

So the blog entries to follow will be most likely not be my most intimate moments. They will be very filtered. If you want to know the intimate details, then talk to me in person, I prefer that form or comunication anyway.

So on to my second blog entry...