Witch Sculpture: Days 1 & 2
Day 1
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!
Tags: sculpture, taxidermy, the witchest