Unit 8: Where in the World? - Part 1

Head Portrait, and Character Concept Sculpture

I believe, for a sculptor, the most important thing to learn how to sculpt human heads. Jordu Schell says "If you can sculpt a human head, you can sculpt anything," Amelia Rowcroft says, even if you want to make creatures for the film industry, you have to show them some head portraits in your portfolio. One of our teacher Simon Stringer said something similar to us. If he wants to hire a sculptor, the head portrait is the first thing he wants to see in the portfolio.

Well, I do believe that the spinal of our course is the projects of Unit 8, moreover the head portrait. Achieving a good likeness in portrait sculpture requires getting the foundations right. This is what I need/ needed to learn. I feel that I am very lucky because I had a chance in my life to learn this, from one of the best sculptors in the world.

We had to sculpt a beautiful young woman from photos. I deliberately mentioned that the model is a good looking person because this is the hardest thing to sculpt. In her face, there are no wrinkles or anything "interesting", everything is smooth, so harder to find and sculpt her character.

Louise, the model

This project was similar to the previous one. Our teacher John Humphreys, was sculpting alongside us.

He showed his techniques, and we tried to follow him.

John provided all of the measurements and diagrams moreover, we received some life-size prints of the model. We cut out the negative of her profile and used it as a great guide to sculpting the profile of the sculpture.

Than following John`s demo, I started to build up the basic shapes.I added the clay just little by little as he instructed us to do.

I have tried to work on the sculpture from every single angle. I wanted to develop every side of it.

I have felt that I am on track and I am progressing quite okay. I was keep watching back Johns recorded lessons, I tried to see how the magic happens. However after more than a week work something went wrong.

I knew there is a problem, but I could not really figure it out.

I could not even sleep properly, I was working soo long, and I became very stressed. I was working on it already 2 weeks, and something was wrong. Something fundamental. The shape and structure of her head went wrong. I had to make a hard decision. I basically removed 70% of the clay, and I started the sculpture from scratch. I was so frustrated that time, I did not even made pictures of that event. I had a chat with John, I had to tell him what happened. He gave me some advice but maybe the best one was to keep breaks constantly. So I decided to take a day off. In a couple of days, I was able to resculpt the basic shapes of the head. So when I had a tutorial with Geraldine, I was able to show something to her, not just a piece of unshaped clay on the armature.

. I asked my girlfriend to sit model for me a couple of times, just to see her head structure. What is going on around the eye. Alongside we had sculpting sessions with Geraldine. We sculpted some head features, like nose, mouth and eye. I kept looking for other sculptors work. I wanted to figure out what they did, how they did and what is missing from my sculpture

So I went back to the basic shapes, and slowly but surely I started to see Louise in the clay!

John said that a sculpture or an artwork should be entertaining. I wanted to achieve that, moreover, I wanted to give some "life "to the sculpture, but obviously not too much. I decided to give just a little bit of a smile, just like John did with his sculpture.

I still did not start to do any details yet. I promised myself until the basics are not done, I can not go further. So I spent days to keep checking the measurements and the basics, and I kept using basic references!

I really wanted to go for this style.

I have decided to sculpt the basics of the ear separately from the head, to make sure that they are symmetric with each other. After that I started to design the hair.

Sketching the hair.

The last feature was the eye. I think I sculpted her eyes a minimum of like 20 times until I achieved the right one.

The final clay sculpture

Moulding and Casting

I used the same technique to mould and cast the portrait that we learnt at the uni with the skull project.

I have used normal soap as a release agent.

I had to make a strong plaster jacket.

The fresh Plaster cast

Character Concept Sculpture

The last stage of Unit 8 was quite interesting to work.

We had to turn our head sculpture into a character from Macbeth.

My first idea was Lady Macbeth than I thought one of the witches would be more interesting, and fun to do. I think almost everybody from uni chose a witch to do.

My idea was to make a witch character design for a possible serious adaptation of the play. In that case, I wanted to make a "realistic-looking" witch, not a cartoony one.

The witch from Stan Winston`s "Pumpkinhead"

For this project, I have purchased

the Character Makeup Sculpting from the Stan Winston Scool Of Character Arts and used as a guide. However instead of copy they design from it, I decided to have fun, and I sculpted my own character. As I mentioned before, I wanted to make a realistic whitch, and I thought it would be a good idea if she would look like a bit an old gipsy woman. Just like one in the original Wolfman.

So I started to sculpt again, I did not want to change a lot on Loiuse, I still wanted to make sure that you can recognise her.

I have tried out to sculpt some new creepy skin textures and modifying her head structure a bit.

Much bigger (than normal) forehead for the disturbing look and bigger nose as a classic feature of witches.

I made her blind for one of her eyes.

Well, one of the ear could not come out from the mould properly. Half of the ear is missing, so I started to resculpt it, when I stopped for a moment. Hmmm.... I quite like it like this. Maybe someone bites off her ear? Yes!

Bigger ear.

Than I dressed her up, with some old cloth. This was much harder and difficult than it looks like. I had to cover all of the cloth.

Unit 8 was very hard, but I feel I have learnt a lot from it. It was the very best so far, and of course I need to practice and keep sculpting heads. I do feel I have done de best what I was able to do. I am sure that after my twentieth portrait I will be much better.

However, I am quite happy with my results because people can recognise Loiuse when they look at the sculpture.

In my work experience, I showed a picture of the portrait to John Schoonrad, who knows John Humpreys and Louise. He looked at the picture then he said: She looks like just her mother!

I feel I have learnt a lot from Unit 8. I need to practice and keep sculpting heads. I have already started with the same technique that we learnt from John.