Part of my reason for starting this website was to force myself to take pictures of the pieces I'm working on. For some reasons, photos allow me to be more objective and see things that I miss when looking at my pieces in real life. Taking pictures on a regular basis is a good habit to get into for a sculptor. I do not claim to understand why it works, but it does. Try it.

My problem of late, has been that when I do take pictures, usually intending to post them for feedback on forums or mailing lists frequented by better sculptors, I tend to see so many glaring mistakes and problems that I never post them out of shame. I tell myself that I'll fix the most glaring mistakes and then take more pictures, and I usually do, but... well, it's a vicious cycle, because (of course) when I see the new pictures, I spot more things that embarrass me. So, my thought is that if I make it a habit to just take pictures at the end of every sculpting sessions and force myself to post them ]no matter how bad they are, that hopefully it will get me out of this funk I'm in where I hate everything I sculpt.

Now, just because I'm frustrated, don't feel like you shouldn't criticize me. I adore people who rip my work apart. Oh, not people who are intentionally mean without giving any useful information, but people who actually see issues, especially correctable issues are a huge help to me. Seriously. Feel free to tell me every niggling problem you see, even if they're obvious. Much of the progress I've made sculpting has been directly facilitated by people ripping my work apart. You can even do it anonymously down in the comments if you like.

What's Behind Door Number 1?

So, here we go. Let's start with a figure study I'm working on. This guy's about eight inches tall and done in polymer clay - Super Sculpey mixed with Sculpey III. The clay is a lot firmer than I normally use, which made doing the basic build-up slower than I'm used to, but I must say I'm liking the firmer clay now that I'm starting to get more into detail work.

This piece is nothing particularly fascinating; I'm not trying to be especially creative with this one and it exists only to help me learn. I'm trying to create a fairly faithful interpretation of some reference photographs I have. I'm still in the fairly early stages, which tends to be where I like my pieces the best.

This is the first piece I've done where I've made part of the armature removable: His head comes off, which is why there's that big crevasse around his neck. See, he can do party tricks:

When I first blocked him out, his legs were too short. I've lengthened them some, but think I might need to do some more. I think the short legs came from the fact that I was working seated and looking down on the sculpture on a lazy-suzan on a table. When I'm working on my modeling stand, I almost never have this problem, but I make the legs short fairly consistently when I work seated. Guess if I were smart, I wouldn't work seated any more, huh?

I'm really liking being able to take the head off and work on it separately. I feel like I have a lot more control working on the face like this, rather than having to maneuver my tools in there, especially with an awkward pose like this. You can see from the closeup that the face is still very rough, but the basic shape isn't too horrible. There are some definite symmetry issues, and the eyes are not quite at the same level, but those are very fixable issues at this stage of the game.

And What About Door Number 2?

Ah, yes. Well, the other item on my workbench is an oddity for me. It's one of the few times I've tried to do a non-realistic figure. This is a cartoonish figure that I believe is from an animated television show; she's the Green Lantern from the future or something like that (I don't watch television - I just stumbled across the image while doing a Google search and liked it). I'm trying to capture the spirit of a very stylized two-dimensional character in three dimensions. I thought that a cartoony figure would be easier than a real one to sculpt; I was wrong. I'm having a really, really hard time creating this much simpler character than I do with realistic ones. I keep unintentionally veering shapes towards real human anatomy, making the shapes more complex than they should be, and creating a figure that's not right as a caricature or as a realistic piece. I'm still hoping I can save it, as I like the character and the pose, but I'm really frustrated with it in general.

This piece is also about eight inches tall, and done in Super Sculpey mixed with Fimo.

I think I have to remove her head. I'm really unhappy with the face, and I just can't get it the way I want it with the hair and the arms where they are, but I'm a little intimidated by the prospect of doing it, what with all that hair and stuff, and the fact that I have to get in there with wire cutters and cut apart the armature without destroying too much work. Anyway, here's what she looks like at the moment:

If you want to see the reference image I'm using, you can look here. This one has really got me down. I don't know why I am having such a hard time with it, but I'm going to keep working on it despite that. I've got a bad habit of not finishing sculpts, and it's a habit I need to break.

Alright, well, I think that's enough rambling for me for one night. I've gotten past a major hurdle for me by posting these. Feel free to post comments below if you wish to, and I'll try to get back to posting more links and resources and maybe even a new tutorial.