An Attempted Sculpture Adventure
I love figures — Be they of the action variety, or non-articulated. I just love well sculpted scaled down replicas of characters. So as an artistically inclined and nerdy individual it seems only natural that I’d grab a hunk of some sculpting compound and give it the old college try. Like every kid in America (and likely elsewhere) Play-Doh came first. It was the standard experience. I played with it, took a break to see how it tasted, finished my dinosaur diorama and called it a day. I would make more serious attempts in my High School Sculpture classes. The finished products would not lead one to believe the seriousness of said attempts though. My efforts looked more like chunks of food that coincidentally looked kind of like things. Not unlike your Jay Leno potato chips and so on.
I gave up on art in the third dimension for the years following High School, but something was bound to come along and change that. That something came in the form of collectable action figures and statues that so nerdily enjoy. I learned that the sculptors of such wondrous toys use polymer compound –mainly Super Sculpey– for the original sculpts. I also found an article in an old magazine that showed the process of a Boba Fett statue being made in this way. It wasn’t long before I was at my local Hobby store buying myself a nice big brick of Sculpey. Such is the persuasive power of Boba Fett.
After contemplating long and hard, I settled on a subject for my first piece: An anonymous female elf from a recent sketch.
Seems like a logical choice, right?
WIth the magazine article close at hand for reference, I began the process with the armature. Typically made of aluminum wire, the armature serves as a skeleton for the figure. I built mint mine over a sketch of the character’s basic, non-posed figure drawn at the scale I wanted. That way I could make sure the armature was all proportionate. Then I posed the wire stickman based on the drawing.
Honestly, this is the point where the sculpted version most resembled the source material.
I began globbing polymer clay on to my elf skeleton, building up the basic form. My irritation started with bits of the armature sticking out of the clay structure. Then came the arms. Ooh the arms. The basic form of the torso and legs were there and all that remained was to turn the stick-arms into elf-arms. Trying to build onto the arm wire frames in was impossible given their position in relation to the body. Nothing on the arms could be manipulated without screwing up the body. At this point it was pretty late and my frustration got the best of me. I ripped all the clay off the bones and slapped it back on to the brick from whence it came.
Some days later it occurred to me to just cut the arms off the wire frame and build them independent of it. So I amputated the arms from the frame and started all over. After several hours and squashing the first head and starting it over, I decided I was done. not satisfied –Just done.
I don’t hate it, it just doesn’t look at al like it should. Also, I burnt it.
I managed to have a realistic perspective though, despite my urge to go all artist-angsty and throw it or something. I realize that it’s my first attempt at such a thing and that it’s pretty good considering. It’s okay that the head is enormous and looks like one of the things from Dark Crystal. There’s a lot of things I know to do differently now, such as don’t burn it. My next venture with likely be at a larger scale too. That will help with the detail issues.
Despite the crapiness of this one, I am excited to do more.
I like it!