, costs about $100-140 and is well worth it. I’ve burned up seven ordinary $25 glue guns in the past two years. This orange beast can effortlessly put out several pounds of glue a minute. It requires specific shaped glue sticks available in 11-pound boxes. You can find great deals on the web.Sculpting the belly scales
Had a hell of a good day yesterday. I figured out the pattern for the belly scales, and I am expanding them today.
Musical scales
I’m doing the back scales. Scales, strangely enough, are something I simply love to sculpt. There is a wonderful underlying pattern that transitions through the surface. The best way I can describe it is through music.
When I am sculpting, I have to hold in my mind a certain type of music — in this case a classical piece. The large scales near the dorsal are the oboes, wide deep complicated woodwind sounds. The tiny surrounding scales are the piano, a delicate accompanying sound, light and airy. The delineation scales, the ones that separate the top from the bottom, are the drum beats, distant and low. There are other instruments too, small and less prominent, to fill in the sound and round it out.
Working this way is a lot like being a conductor. You sculpt the sound. It is easy to see that the composition of these scales is not, say, a rock and roll beat, nor punk — but they could be jazz. By thinking this way, I find it easier to hold the thought of the patterns in my mind for long periods of time.
The fins, with the silk and lace, will be the violins. These undulating notes wrap themselves around all the other ones and give them unity.
Fin design
To begin the fins, I made really tight sketches of their shape and pattern, taking them from my original “Coral Mermaid.”
I traced the patterns onto acetate. This time I used pink to construct a grid on the other side of the acetate in a one-foot pattern. This trick prevents distortion in the overhead projector.
More photos (and fishing rods!) after the jump.
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Mermaid re-armed
The arms are back on and the scales are nearly done. Yeah!
A friend of mine, who helps work on hydroplane speed boats, is here in the studio making an intake cowling. You can see it behind the mermaid.
He had never clayed up an automotive part before; instead he had been using fiberglass, foam, and bondo. Yecch! I am showing him how to get really beautiful sweeping lines across the cowling. It takes time, but you can really control the shapes this way.
See woman merge into fish after the jump!
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Arm sculpting is tricky
Today I began in earnest to work on the arms. The join to the body is a very tricky area, and it’s taken me most of the day to get it right.
Torso cleanup
Yesterday was hands and elbows. When I finished those, I invited my sculptor friends over to critique and correct the work. Today we got the torso cleaned up and sketched in the belly-dancing top. This will be covered with real fabric and beads, so there is not a lot of detail.
Another week and I’ll begin the moldmaking. It feels wonderful to be at this big benchmark.
Hands and harp
It took me 12 hours to rough out the hands. When I gave her the harp, I realized the harp needs to be thickened up a lot.
Hands are one of the great joys of sculpting. An aspect of the human form is the juxtaposition between the hard bony structure of, say, the elbow, and the soft fleshiness of the surrounding muscles. In the hands, the dance between these two textures is very complex. The bones are like stones in a river with the muscles flowing around them. There is movement, turbulence, and exciting interaction of hard versus soft, rigid versus pliable.
This difference gives the human figure a dynamic quality. Too much softness, and the figure becomes flaccid and uninteresting; too much hardness, and the figure is brittle. Each texture has to be expressed with clarity and distinctness. This is what makes the hands so delightful to sculpt.
Pretty happy
Some headway on the face and hair.
Done with sculpting!
Yeah! The benefit of a Seattle snowstorm that put a foot of snow on the ground: five uninterrupted days trapped in the studio, sculpting.
She is pretty much done and ready for molding. We will begin the molds in four days, the day after Christmas. This will give me time to go over every inch of her to recheck the subtle details, and give my friends time to come over and see her.
Exhausted, happy, elated!
(More photos after the jump.)
Symmetry
Here are some tricks for sculptors frustrated by bilateral symmetry.
First, impress a brightly colored string on the exact centerline of the face, then shine a light exactly on the center string. This makes the differences between sides glaringly apparent and consequently easier to fix.
Second, notice the terminus line — the delineation between light and shadow. You can get this line really sharp by bringing the light close to the sculpture. Concentrate on just sculpting along the terminus line. By moving the light up and down along the centerline, you can capture the volumes more accurately.
Last, take a picture of the piece and put it on your computer screen. Even now, I noticed a bunch of problems just writing this entry! Flipping the image horizontally also makes problems, and therefore solutions, really obvious.