Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Day Four of the self-imposed art, model, crafting challenge.

Seeing light at the end of this project. A few things I've learned from this if I decide to do another of such scale. One, use heavy gauge wire for the armature! I underestimated the weight of this dude. Thankfully, I didn't start sculpting from the bottom up, the constant tilting would have cracked or snapped at the ankles. Two, compensate for shrinkage. Das clay, or any air dry clay, will shrink considerably. Three, is pretty much the same but more careful observation of proportions. I pretty much winged this one, which really didn't matter because I went into it knowing I was doing a rough sculpture. Right now it looks like something you'd buy in a tourist trinket shop, but maybe with with a good faux bronze paint job, it might pass a smell test. Anyway, I had a blast sculpting him and learned a lot. Todavia estoy aprendiendo.


3 comments:

Gary Dombrowski said...

That’s a bucket load of work in such a short time. The major shrinkage that comes with DAS is good to know about. Once dry hard hard is the DAS? I think it would be fun doing clothing and equipment in that scale. Cool stuff. Go with the faux bronze look, shouldn’t look too shabby when done.

Gary Dombrowski said...

By the way, the learning NEVER ends.

Jason said...

Das definitely shrinks. I noticed that when I sculpted that relief of Marcus Aurelius. I may have exaggerated the amount. Maybe 1/16 to an 1/8 inch. I wouldn't use it on small projects/ figures. Planning ahead, like bulking the armature first and work in layers would help. I just slapped the clay on and worked as fast as I could, knowing the quick drying times. You can always add more by wetting the surface.

Big ol' pile of heads and armatures for the St. Privat project.