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If you've been a figurative artist for any length of time, you've probably at least heard about the Pose File series of books by Elte Shuppan / Books Nippan that were published in the early 1990s and have been out of print for about a decade (not to be confused with the American books of the same name currently being published). These books seem to be very sought-after in the used-book market. They retailed for $49.99 back in the nineties, but in good condition, used copies go from about $75 up to $500 or even more depending on which volume (generally later volumes go for more) and condition; even the more common volumes are somewhat hard to find.

I've been curious about these books for some time. If you read this blog, you're probably aware of the fact that I'm a reference junkie, but by the time I got seriously into sculpting, these books had already been out of print for several years, and I really didn't know if they were worth what you had to pay for them, since I had never been able to look at one in person. Well, periodically, I troll eBay and used book sites looking for things that interest me, and these books are among the things I keep an eye out for, hoping to find them at a price I'm willing to pay. In the course of several years, it had never happened.

So, imagine my surprise one day when a search, sorted by price, showed a list of available copies of Pose File books with the first item listed for $7! The second item in the list was the same book, but was going for $78, and the rest of the items in the search went up from there. The $7 book was "Pose File 1: Everyday Perspective", the most common volume, but even at that, it typically goes for $75 or so. Needless to say, I was definitely willing to pay $10 or so (including shipping) to check it out, since I was pretty sure I could make my money back on eBay even if the book was lousy. I'm cheap, and was in no hurry, so I had them use media mail, which brought my total investment to just over $10. That was a little over a week ago, and it finally arrived today:

Other than a little fading and wear on the dust jacket, the book is in just about perfect condition. It's a good quality book, with a good binding (it is softcover, even though there's a dustjacket). The book uses very good quality paper and the printing appears to be of similarly high quality. Although, I can't find my linen tester to check the line screen, it looks darn good to my naked eye.

These books are clearly targeted at illustrators, and probably more specifically at comic book artists. That's not surprising, since comic books are considered a more serious medium in the Land of the Rising Sun (日本) than they are here with genres targeting all age groups. As a result, aspiring comic book artists are a substantial niche audience there. Regardless, it's certainly not a bad book to have on your bookshelf as a sculptor. Most of the poses are taken from multiple angles, and the lighting and photography are done so that shape and form are relatively easy to discern. The images are all black and white, which is actually a benefit for sculptors since it's easier to judge form from shades of grey than from different hues, and overall, this book is worth well more than the ten bucks I spent.

Would it have been worth the retail price of $49.99 or the more commonly found used prices? That's a tougher call. If I were an illustrator or comic book artist, I think I'd find that $49.99 was a fair price for the quality of the product, but the price you find on some of the rarer volumes would still be off-putting for me, but that may just be because I'm cheap. As a sculptor, I'm even less sure that they're valuable enough to justify the higher amount, at least based on what I can judge from the volume I bought. You, see, there are a few drawbacks about this book as a sculpting reference. I do not know if these problems are unique to this particular volume or exist in all of them, but here are the things about this book that make it less than ideal as a figure reference for me personally, to wit:

• The images are too darn small. Yes, I know that printing is expensive and that the publisher had to balance quantity and quality within a limited number of pages, but I think they erred and went too small, even though the quality of printing is excellent and you can use a magnifier, which helps some.
• There's not much variety. Yes, it's from Japan, so I expected the models to all be Japanese, but even by that standard, there's not much diversity. The few models featured in the book are all female, and they all fall within a very narrow range of body types.
• Blurring - ugh! I understand that there are business (and in some places legal) reasons to blur out the genitals, but it still annoys me. In all fairness, this book actually does a pretty good job with the blurring (especially compared with the horrific blurring done in the Virtual Pose series of books) - in most cases, they blur only the bare minimal amount of the image, but it's not perfect and it does bug me when I see it because it reminds me just how provincial an attitude so many people have toward nudity - even nudity that serves a valid, necessary, and long-recognized function

I'd also like to see at least one larger orthographic shot of each model used for measuring proportion and making scale references with. Now, I'm being really nit-picky with these complaints, and I don't want to end this quasi-review on a negative note. This is a good book by almost every measure, especially for the audience for which it was originally created. The quality of the printing and binding and photography are all excellent, it's just not a book made specifically and primarily for sculptors, which isn't really fair to hold against it.

Let's be frank here: There are no figure references books anywhere in or out of print hat would make me completely happy. We sculptors are just too small of an audience for a publisher to bother making something to meet our specific needs, and publishers know that we will spend our money on less-than-perfect figure reference works developed with the needs of illustrators or comic book artists in mind and be moderately happy with them. Oh, well.

Previous updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Okay, well, started to sculpt the face some, still working pretty rough, but trying to get an idea of where the features are so I can tell if the head really is big. Honestly, I have to say that the head still looks too big to me in the pictures, more so from certain angles. It could be the pose, but I'm going to have to do some serious caliper checks next time I sculpt, because it really looks too big to me and I don't want to invest a lot of work if it's going to have to get re-done.

Anyway, I've taken the arms off again to work on the torso better. Once I start working on the hands, it's going to become a lot harder to take the arms off, since the hands are intertwined, so I wanted to get the shape of the abdomen blocked in early. I actually rather like the torso so far, at least from the front.

I've increased the size of the image links to 800x600; I hope no one minds:

In general, I've been favoring the right side of the sculpt (her left side), which I shouldn't be doing, but sue me. I'll bring the left side up to snuff next sculpting session - I know the importance of symmetry and won't go too far on one side without working on the other, but I really wanted to get the face roughed in, and I do much better on the right side of faces.

Previous updates: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

While I was waiting for my clay to warm, I spent a few minutes re-visiting my 8" male anatomy study that I started a few weeks back. Today, I did a bit of work on his head and done some refining of the limbs. I'm moderately happy with the way the face is shaping up - this is a tough scale for faces, but I feel like it's coming along okay. I'm less happy with the body, but I'm in no rush.

I have to admit that my heart's not really into this piece at the moment, and the moment the clay was warm enough to use, I went back to my new piece. I did a little work on the face, and some more refining of the limbs.

When I finished up and started taking pictures, the head looked too big to me from the front view, a little big from the side, and fine from the back, so I did a caliper check. The height is fine, but her head IS a little wide, so tomorrow, first thing, I'll thin down the face before doing anything else.

Previous updates: 1, 2, and 3.

Spent a little time in the studio this evening with my new sculpt. Sculpted for a little while, then decided to take some pictures and call it a night. I threw the wire arms on to get an idea of the pose and grabbed my camera:

But then when I was taking the picture from the rear — an angle I haven't focused on that much — I realized that something was very wrong with the proportions. Either the hips were too wide or the waist too narrow, but I wasn't sure which. So, I pulled out the calipers and checked them both. The waist was spot on, but the hips were too wide, so I shaved them down some, and then kept going for a little while.

Thinning it down helped tremendously, though I've still got a ways to go until the outline is fully established. After shaving down her hips, I added the shoulders over the re-attached arm supports, made the head a touch bigger. It looks too big to my eye now, but the caliper says it's right. I'm going to hold off judgement until I get the eye sockets in, and a more face-like shape on it before I put my stamp of approval on the change, though.

Overall, I like the way it's shaping up and am still having fun with Chavant.

You can find part one of this series here here and part two here.

Well, the washing machine went kaput over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I spent the better part of yesterday at my in-laws doing laundry. That limited my sculpting time for the day quite a bit, however I did spend some quality time with the clay in the morning. The body is starting to take shape. It's still very rough and the outline is not fully established, but I still feel pretty good about the way it's shaping up. Unfortunately, I have to work today, so I won't get to do more on this until tonight at the earliest.

Here's what it's looking like now:

Note: This is the second part of a multi-part series. If you didn't read the first part, this might make more sense if you read part one first.

Man, I really like this Chavant Professional. Being new to oil clay, I have no opinion as to how Chavant Professional compares to NSP, Roma, or any other oil clay, but I know I really like it. I feel like I'm sculpting again. Now, I know somebody who reads this is going to take that the wrong way, and I don't mean it as an insult or even as a statement about the worth of any other media; it's just a statement of my subjective feeling. You see, I started sculpting with ceramics clay, usually in larger scale but without an armature. For almost two years, I used water clay exclusively and, as a result, I have a deep, abiding love for water clay, especially for manipulating it with my fingers. I moved on to other materials and scales for practical reasons, but none of them feel as good to me as water clay and I really love being able to do so much of the sculpting with my fingers.

I've known about plastilina (aka oil clay) for a long time. I don't honestly know why I never tried it before today, but I'm kicking myself for it. Wax, polymer clay, and epoxies are all great media, but because of where I started with sculpting, none of them excite me the way manipulating clay with my fingers does. I work with other media extensively and enjoy creating with them, but there's something about the feel of natural clay that just sends shivers up my spine. A freshly opened bag of water clay is still one of my favorite smells in the world.

Oil clay, at the right temperature, has the same feel (sadly, not the same smell, though). Warmed up, it's got that same wonderful slipperiness as a fresh bag of ceramics clay, and man, I just spent an hour in heaven. The only thing that would have made it better was if I'd have been working from a model instead of a bunch of photographs.

Anyway, after typing the last post, I realized that I was sculpting like a newbie, doing the shape of the legs without blocking in the major masses of the torso. When I started again this evening, I didn't wipe out what I had done — you never know, it could be right — but I did start working a little more like somebody who knew what the hell they were doing. I first blocked in the basic shape of the ribcage and pelvis. I even took a caliper measurement for the width of the chest, though I did pretty much everything else by eye.

After getting the torso and pelvis blocked in, I felt much better about myself, but also became worried. One thing I don't like about this particular armature stand design is that it doesn't give you the ability to change the angle of attachment to the armature. Now, the trade-off is that this design is extremely stable and easy to build, but the loss of one angle of adjustment hurts: I've got a section of about an inch where the armature has to be perfectly vertical - the inch that's comprised of the brass t-adaptor. With the pose I'm sculpting, the model has her spine arched going forward from the pelvis. In fact, I'd say that the curve of her stomach and back is really what defines this pose, and I really want it to be right. That darn vertical inch happens to be right in the part of the spine that should be curving. I think I can work around it, but I don't want to find out I can't after spending lots of hours doing other things, so I'm going to work on the curve of the stomach, then the back and buttocks just to make sure that the t-adaptor is going to fit completely inside the sculpt.

I got a start on doing so before I had to do round two of bedtime stories (my oldest daughter is a night owl like me):

I think I'm going to be alright with the T-adaptor, but I may have to play around with it a little bit, moving some clay from the front of the torso and stomach to the back. Overall, I'm enjoying the hell out of this project. The oil clay, combined with doing a larger piece has really brought back some excitement and magic back into sculpting for me. Even though it's late, I'm considering going back down and doing a little more. What the heck? Everybody else is asleep? Or maybe I'll just go to sleep.

I've had three five pound blocks of Chavant staring at me from a shelf in my studio for a few weeks now, beckoning to me. I've never really worked with oil clay, but it seems like it might be a good medium for me. I love water clay, but it's a pain with figurative work. It's hard to keep thinner parts from drying out, and the constant spraying of water causes my tools to rust if I'm not very diligent about drying and cleaning them. And I'm not.

Polymer clays are cool, and I like a lot of things about them, but I have to admit that I've never really liked the way they feel. They feel like plastic to me, not like clay. Since they are plastic, I guess that makes sense, but my use of polymer clays has always felt like a compromise. Wax, I just haven't taken to. I find it hard to work with and frustrating. But, oil clay sounds right up my alley. It feels like clay, but its consistency changes with heat, not with the amount of water, and it never dries out, making it well-suited to dilettantes like me who sometimes go several days or weeks between sculpting sessions. Other than the fact that it can't be made permanent, it sounds like a perfect medium, so it's odd that I've never tried it.

Prior to a few days ago, I couldn't find time to start a sculpt with it. I was traveling for work, then had to prepare for the holidays, then had company for the holiday. Finally, A few days ago, I found time to build an armature for a new sculpture, and boy, it's a beauty. I know, I owe you all an armature tutorial, but in the meantime, this sculpture uses the technique found in John Brown's first DVD with only a few modifications (I use an adjustable support, smaller-gauge crossbar and t-adaptor, and do not fasten the leg wires down, but just drill holes for them and seat them with clay), so if you're jonesing to build an armature and are getting tired of waiting for me, you'll probably find John Brown's video to be well worth your time. I still plan to do an armature tutorial, I'm just not sure when I'm going to get to it. Anyway, here it is:

This armature is a for a figure a little over twenty inches tall, which is the largest I've ever built. Well, actually, I tried to build one this big another time when I was first starting out a few years ago, but it was (shall we say) structurally unsound and collapse in a heap, taking my spirits with it. I haven't attempted anything larger than 1/6th scale since. This one seems to be quite stable, though, and I'm exited to try something this large.

I built the armature based on a female skeleton, so I knew I was doing a sculpture of an adult female, but beyond that, I didn't have any idea what I wanted to sculpt. For a few days, I obsessed, trying to come up with just the right idea but after driving myself (and my wife) crazy for a while, I finally decided to just pick some pictures from my reference collection and sculpt it as an anatomy study. At this stage, I need anatomy practice far more than I need an idea for a masterpiece, so I just found a pose I liked and printed out some images for a reference board. You can see the armature here along with the reference board in the background (using images from 3d.sk):

Obviously, I'd rather work from a live model, but it's just not practical most of the time with my schedule because I do most of my sculpting after the rest of the family has gone to sleep. I do need to start working from life again, however - it's been too long, and I feel like my work is suffering for it (if you don't ever sculpt from life, you really, really need to start). Anyway, this is my substitute for a model. I have no idea how other sculptors do their reference boards, but I know many others use them.

I'll give a quick explanation to my approach here: One board has orthographic front and side shots printed at the same scale that the actual sculpture will be. These two shots gives me something to measure against with calipers when I need to check scale on my piece. I use the rest of that piece of foam-core for close-ups of various parts of the body. Right now, there are only three shots of the head — front, side, and three-quarters — but I will likely add more pictures as I progress. I don't want to focus on details now, so having a close-up of an ear or eye or whatever would be no help, and might coax me into doing detail work prematurely, which is something I'm prone to doing anyway and am really trying to avoid. On the other board are eight images of the pose I'm actually sculpting, not to scale. This one's for eyeballing, not for measuring, but it's at least as important as the other board, and probably more important. I actually try to work by eye most of the time, and only pull out the calipers when my eye fails to tell me exactly what is wrong.

Next step, of course, is to chop up some of the Chavant...

...and throw it in the warming box...

After a few minutes, I grabbed some clay, and despite warnings from several people, I proceeded to burn myself with molten clay due to grabbing a piece that was right in the light's hot spot. Several minutes and a couple of well-chosen swear words later, I began constructing the base for the piece. This isn't, perhaps, real sculpting, but it's enough to tell me that I like this clay. Except for the smell. I love the smell of water clay, especially when you open a new bag; this stuff smells like water clay that's been stored in somebody's ass.

Here's what a few minutes gets me:

As you can see, I've taken the arms off for ease of working. This is one of the great tips I got from the John Brown video linked above, and it's a huge help. It obviously doesn't take much talent to sculpt a sloppy rectangle, but it's been good for me to get the feel of the Chavant, and now I'm ready to start bulking out the piece. I start with the feet and legs.

Again, this is pretty simple stuff, but I find I have the best luck if I work simply at first, finding larger shapes and contours, and then refining.

I'm actually working differently than I normally do. Normally I block out the rib cage and pelvis first, and I really don't know why I didn't do that this time. I wasn't really thinking, but I'll probably do the ribcage and pelvis shapes first in my next session.

Now, seeing as it's Saturday night, and I'm a wild and crazy guy, I'll probably be doing more sculpting after I've gotten the kids to sleep, so you might see another update tonight. If not, well, I've got one more day off before returning to the grind, so keep stopping back!

Well, after being away almost continuously for three weeks, and with the holiday coming and family visiting, finding free time to sculpt or hobble together the pieces of the tutorials I've been working on has been difficult. I'm hoping to find some free time over the holiday, but can't promise.

If I'm not able post before then, I want to wish those of you in the US a Happy Thanksgiving.

I have enough pictures for the next two tutorials at least, but now to find the time to write them up! And now that I'm home, I'm quickly losing interest in finishing the miniatures as I get anxious for some free time to return to my in-progress pieces, not to mention the 15 pounds of Chavant waiting to be used on a new piece.

Oh, also, I had to turn off trackbacks; I was getting spammed something fierce. And as interested as you all are in sketchy ads for Viagara, Andrea Bocelli concert tickets, and various ways to increase the penis size, I didn't see them as particularly relevant to my blog and got tired of deleting them. If you want to trackback to me on a post, just drop me an email, and we can set it up.

Okay, as promised, I'm going to go into the process I use when sculpting on the road. My commonly-used sculpting materials when I'm home are polymer clay, water clay, and oil clay, and I sometimes dabble in wax. When I travel, especially by plane, none of these are good options for a number of reasons that should be obvious. Epoxy putty, on the other hand, is a medium that can be used on the road because it cures hard in an hour or two, so I can sculpt in the evening, and by the next morning, the stuff I worked on the night before is hard enough to safely get packed away in my suitcase with little risk of getting damaged on the trip home. I brought more tools with me this time than I normally do, because I typically build a bunch of small 28mm and 54mm armatures at home before I leave, which I didn't do. The good side of that is that it allows me to show you the process from the very beginning.

Before we get started, I want to show you two alternatives to the method I will be showing in today's post. I'm going to be doing this "the hard way" today, so to speak. Building a soldered wire armature is the most work of any of the various miniature armature methods I know, but it also affords you the most flexibility. Here are two alternatives:

On the left, you can see a pre-cast armature (sometimes called a "dolly" or "blank"). which are available from a number of sources. The one in the picture above is from Jeff Valent Studios, but similar products are available from Reaper Miniatures, eBob Miniatures, and likely many other places. These are very convenient and easy to use, but they are somewhat limiting in that they lock you in to a certain set of proportions. You can tweak them a little by squeezing the metal to lengthen the limbs or can cut them to shorten the limbs. You can also get more dynamic poses by cutting apart the tab that locks the feet together. You have to be careful with these, though, as you can only bend the joints a few times before the metal will snap, unlike floral wire which can be bent many, many times before it weakens enough to break.

On the right is an armature made of twisted floral wire. This is a convenient method because it requires only a little floral wire and something to cut that wire with. Other than that, all you need are your fingers, and perhaps something to measure the proportions of the armature you're building. Personally, I don't much care for this technique, despite its convenience, because I find it hard to get the proportions exact using this method. When you're working on a figure that's 28mm tall, being off by a few millimeters can be significant. That being said, I know some professional miniature sculptors who use this method with great success, so don't let my dislike deter you from trying it. If anyone is interested, I can do a short tutorial on how to make one of these in a later posting.

The method I'm going to use today is a little more involved, and you will need a few tools before you get started.

First, you'll need wire. I use floral wire because it's inexpensive and readily available at craft stores just about anywhere. It's also easy to bend and fairly strong. I typically use 20 gauge for building 28mm-scale miniatures and larger. I use 24 or 28mm for smaller scale and also sometimes to wrap the thicker wire to give me more surface space for the putty to stick to. The color or kind of floral wire really doesn't matter, but I generally avoid the coated wire and go with the bare silver or gold floral wire because I know the solder will make a good seal with the metal

Since we're going to be soldering to connect pieces of wire, you're obviously going to need a soldering iron and some solder. I ordinarily use a butane soldering iron, but you can't take those on the plane even in your checked luggage, so I'm using my fallback corded electric soldering iron along with some rosin core silver bearing solder.

I also use a small piece of cork and metal pushpins for holding the wire in place while I solder it. It's kind of important to use metal pushpins and not plastic ones, especially when using a butane soldering iron, since the heated exhaust has a tendency to melt the plastic which smells vile and is probably not very healthy for your lungs. Trust me on that one: Get the metal pushpins. You can usually find both of these at office supply stores or in the office supply aisle of a department store.

You'll also need some nippers to cut the wire with, and round-nosed pliers (aka ring benders) to bend the wire and pose the armature.

Finally, you're going to need an armature map, which is simply a diagram of the figure at the scale you're going to be working. Patrick Keith has a good one available on his website here, as does Matt Gubser (look here). Matt is also the author of a book on sculpting miniatures called "Sculptors Do It With Small Tools", which you can learn more about here. I didn't have a printer available to me in my hotel room, so I just sketched out a quick armature map on a piece of paper using a pencil and ruler. I'm going to work in 54mm scale for this tutorial so that you can see what's going on better in the pictures, but the process is identical for doing a 28mm figure. You can see from this picture that you don't need anything fancy (or well drawn), just something you can use to gauge the proportions of your armature.

And that, basically is all the tools you need, so come back next time when we put these tools to use and start building the armature!

Well, I've been in Des Moines for close to a week now, and I didn't do any sculpting until yesterday. It's not hard to find excuses - I worked long hours and was tired when I got back to my hotel room each night, but when I'm home, a hard day of work is actually more likely to make me sculpt, and there I have other responsibilities besides work. I think I've figured out why it was so hard for me to sculpt this past week, and that was a lack of space.

Ordinarily when I travel to Des Moines, I stay at the downtown Marriott, which is a fairly standard full-service Marriott, with normal size rooms. As an "elite" member of Marriott Rewards (translation: I travel a lot), I often get upgraded to larger rooms, but even the normal size rooms there have a large desk and a fair amount of space. In fact, I'm typing this from a room in the Des Moines Marriott, right now. I have my computer out, and all my sculpting stuff where I can just sit down and use it, and don't have to worry about shuffling things around But, I just checked in here yesterday. Last week, I was at a different hotel: the Renaissance Savery, which is another Marriott property.

Now, I like the Savery... a lot. It's an old hotel with a lot of character. There's absolutely nothing cookie cutter about it at all, and I don't think I've stayed in two rooms that were exactly the same there. Many of the rooms are extraordinarily large, and prior to this stay, every room I was in was at least as large as an ordinary modern hotel room, and on many occasions I was put into multi-room suites.

This past week, I found the downside of an "old hotel with a lot of character"; there are also some rooms that are ridiculously small, and I got one. I think they would ordinarily hesitate to put an elite guest in a room this small, but to be honest, with all the politicians in towns, I was lucky to get a room at all. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the room - but my camera didn't have a lens that was wide-angle enough. The bed practically touched the wall - I had to climb over the bed to get to my suitcase, and the closet door couldn't even open up all the way, making for a rather amusing scene each morning as I tried to get my hanging clothes out of it. The desk was tiny, and barely fit my laptop computer. It just wasn't practical to set up my sculpting stuff and leave it out, and at the end of the day it just seemed like too much effort to clean off the desk and pull out my sculpting stuff, only to know that when I was done, I would have to put it away again.

Now that I've moved hotels, I've got the luxury of more room and I've been sculpting in a lot of my free time. I'm working in small scale in epoxy putty, which is a medium I've gotten a bit rusty at, but it feels good to be doing something. In my next few posts, I will be posting some pictures of my progress for those who aren't familiar with sculpting in epoxy putty.

Take a lesson from my experience. If you want to sculpt, the best thing you can do for yourself is to find a dedicated space. It doesn't have to be much - even a corner of an unused table or an old door suspended across two sawhorses in the basement (that may sound silly, but my first dedicated space was basically just that). Good lighting is important, as is being comfortable in your spot, but the most important thing is to have the ability to leave stuff if out you want to. I'm not saying that you shouldn't clean up after yourself, but you shouldn't always have to clean up everything if you're in the middle of a sculpt. If you can leave some stuff out, you're far more likely to fit in short sculpting sessions when you have short periods of free time.

Also... and I know a few people disagree with me on this, but I believe for most people it is sound advice: Don't sculpt at your computer, because nothing will distract you from sculpting more than the internet.

Feels like I get back from one trip and it's time to leave for another. And the reason it feels like that, is because that's exactly what I'm doing. I leave in the morning for a nine-day business trip to lovely Des Moines. Though we had a house full of sick people (including me), I managed to get a small amount of sculpting in this weekend, knowing I wouldn't be able to work on these for ten days.

Most of the time I spent was on the face of my naked guy. For reference, this head is about 3/4". I'm relatively happy with it, although it is obviously still rough and needs some finish. I'm about 90% happy with the expression and features - it's ALMOST what I wanted it to be.

The lips still need some work. I'm quite happy with the start I got on the ears, and yes, they're supposed to be big like that. I'm sorta picturing this guy as a devil, so while I'm trying to keep his proportions mostly human, I wanted to deviate a bit to show that he's something more than some guy holding a skull.

The body didn't receive as much attention, but I did spend some time on the musculature of the torso, and re-worked his right arm (our left) a little, but all four limbs still need a lot of attention, including some more lengthening of the legs.

I'm actually happy with what little I did, but obviously there's a long way left to go on this fellow.

Now, the Green Lantern chick didn't get a lot of loving this weekend, but I did do a little work on her. Mostly, I frustrated myself by working on her hands. They are relatively simple compare to doing realistic hands, but I'm having a heck of a time getting them the way I want them. I think I'm going to need to do the hands off the sculpture, as I need to be able to turn them around and see them from different angles, which is hard to do on the stand.

I do like the body, though, and think that I'll do a little more refinement, then bake it, sand it down, and start working on the details. The feet need some cleanup, but I think I'll do that after baking it - I can always sand them down and add clay if I need to, but it's darn hard to get to the back of the feet while she's on the stand. I've decided to throw away the first head I sculpted and start over completely from scratch, but I don't want to start that until the body's been baked once.

Man, was I happy to be sculpting again after several days traveling. Oh, well. I've packed along some epoxy putty and plan to do some sculpting in the evenings while I'm gone. I haven't been working on miniature sculpting in a while, but it's one thing I can do on the road, so I will be doing some this trip. I also have a couple of ideas for non-progress blog posts that I'll try to get to over the next week.