I attached a snapshot of the witch’s forehead as I left it. I’m struggling with a lot of creative fronts here - the compression of skin and muscles on the bony ridge of her brow, my unfamiliarity with sculpting materials, and my weak vision for this project. I have attempted multiple times to visualize this creature in the hopes of building a blueprint, a cohesive mental picture to benchmark my progress and guide my hands. I am a far cry from a sculptor but I do know the benefits of a clear creative vision. The trouble is that each time I try to build on yesterday’s ideas, different ideas come out. I never seem to produce a progressively defined, single idea; instead, the more sketches I make, the more variation is introduced.

As a result I started working the clay just for the sake of getting into it and feeling like I was getting somewhere. I don’t entirely regret jumping in and figuring things out along the way, but now I’m paying for it. How can I add clay to the forehead to make convincing brow creases when I don’t have a confident grasp of the skull’s shape underneath? At what point do I know that enough under-structure is in place, so that I can move on to surface structures?

These are of course the high level problems that undoubtedly all sculpture students cope with for years; I can’t expect to figure them out in only 10 projects, let alone 1. I know that the more I work on the witch, the closer I come to the point of marginal returns on my time; I can’t make the underlying features of the head better without starting over completely, so really I’m just taking this opportunity to learn as much as I can from the inaugural n00b experience before I stick a fork in it and call it done. I can’t demand perfection, which means I can stop really any time I want; in a way, that’s refreshing.
I say this happily knowing that the road to good work is paved with all the crap that came before. The crappy stuff is what we should be proud of once we’ve finally progressed to the top of the hill, because even if the crappy stuff wasn’t fun, we had the guts to endure it.

Whatever the reason, the warm weather is upon us. Time to scratch that spring fever itch and build something.

In the pics: You can tell that I had a roommate in the shed this past winter. A mouse had 4 months to carpet-bomb my shed with droppings and build a few really decadent nests out of what was once my $30 HEPA-rated air filter. No sign of my deadbeat tenant now, though. Good riddance.

I’m happy to be at the point where I’m adding muscle and tissue under the eyes.  It really elevates the waves of hatred and evil coming off this thing.  When all’s said and sculpted the bags of the lower lids should flow down across the cheeks and join up with the jowls, adding to the ancient, saggy wrinkliness of the thing.  Lots of road to cover still!

The right side of the witch’s face has been covered with muscles and the first layer of skin…  The right side is still the underlying structure of the skull.  I decided to build up the head in structural layers to give a more “realistic” appearance - in quotes because, obviously, it’s not a realistic creature at all!

I decided to add some tumors on the left side of the head, but this turned out to be a problem down the road…  If I wanted to add that sort of detail I should have waited until the underlying skull was finished and SYMMETRICAL.  After I took these photos, I attempted to add layers of flesh on the left side to match the right side.  Getting the two halves to look similar is presenting a lot of challenges.

The layers of flesh drape pretty nicely.  I want the cheeks to emphasize age with the sagging cheeks that fall down under the cheekbones.  The low drooping is hiked up by the muscles of the nose to raise the hackles, and so a big challenge I have is realistically communicating the contrast between those flexed hackle-muscles and the sagging, relaxed skin of the cheeks.

I really like this profile.  Getting the other side to match is very difficult!

once this underlayer is finished I plan to etch a great deal of deep lines into the surface to indicate the flowing sinews of the muscle.  From there I’ll add pockets of fatty skin and smooth over spots to indicate the skin covering the muscle tissue…  And on top of that will go the wrinkles, warts. etc.

This is something I love about drawing and it pleases me to see how well it extends to sculpture.  Beginning with an underlying structure and gradually adding layers of detail is highly rewarding.  Best of all, sculpture doesn’t suffer from the frustrating challenges of 3D computer modeling…  I don’t need to juggle the artistic decisions with how I’ve laid out a mesh, and how that presents technical obstacles.  If I want to add a nostril I just add a dab of clay and sculpt it with my fingers, then smooth the transition into the face.

More to come later!

In about an hour and a half, I set up the work bench and got the innermost layer of clay on the styrofoam head.  To support the head, I built a wooden box out of plywood with a 1″ hole drilled in its top and bottom.  I ran a 1″ diameter dowel rod through this hole after cutting it to a suitable length and stuck a styrofoam model head on it.  Perfectly improvised turntable!  With that I was ready to begin.

We ordered 50 lbs of Klean Klay for this project, and it looks like we’ll have plenty to spare.  By using a styrofoam wig model head as a base, the sculpture is made much lighter and uses far less clay.  I could feel my brain figuring out the most utterly basic techniques with sculpture as I set to work.

Day 2

I spent about two hours in the shed today working on the sculpture - longer than I originally planned to.  I got so engaged that I lost track of time!

My major obstacle became the integration of our taxidermy purchases - namely the wolf jaws.  This here model head is human; beauty supply stores don’t typically sell wigs to lycanthropes.  (They have hair to spare.)  I knew I wanted the jaw to be in this sculpture from early on, so as soon as the first layer of base clay was laid on the head, I picked up a flat-head screwdriver and went to work.  Somewhat morbidly I chiseled off the lower jaw of the model and dug my way back to the dowel rod support.

I got pretty worried at this juncture - I didn’t use any glue to attach the jaw to the styrofoam head.  Really there isn’t much use in trying - once the styrofoam starts peeling away it comes off with little effort.  However it compacts nicely, so I was able to wedge the jaw into the mass of the styrofoam, which gripped it and holds it mostly in place.  My next worry, of course, is that the weight of the clay (as I build up the muzzle over the jaw) will tear the jaw out.  When I finished today it appeartd stable, but all the same I propped up a little piece of dowel rod under the jaw to prevent this from happening.

I’m pretty pleased so far but I want this head to say “wolf” more than “rat.”  Time to find some reference photography.

That’s all for now!  On a friend’s advice I will keep taking pictures as the sculpture progresses.  It may not look like much now, but who knows - in a couple weeks the difference will be striking!

More like:

These are my newest acquisitions from a taxidermist supply store. The eyes will be 24mm, roughly the size of a human eye, or the size of a really large wolf’s. I love the idea of using taxidermy supplies; they’re relatively cheap, very realistic,  and easily accessible. I think the “wolf-witch” idea will be a creepy balance between the traditional witch you’re used to seeing and the “Holy crap WTF is that?” beast that makes you question the last time you used the restroom.

There’s also 50 lbs of clay and some sculpting tools on their way — I wish we lived nearby a decent art supply store.

Now that the art supplies are coming, I’ve got two tasks lined up:

1) Figure out how the heck to program my PLC (but I have a good text!)

2) Acquire a motor and start constructing the cauldron-stirring mechanism

I’ve been away the last few weeks working in another city, which meant all work and no play. Hopefully I can make some real progress this week while I’m back home.

I don’t think it says “I’m a witch” as much as “SATAAAN”.  Hmm…  Whether we use it or not, doing this (Wacom tablet in Photoshop) was a great exercise in conceptualizing the forms and textures of our project.  I found it very rewarding.