iSculpt.org

Wow... crazy day. Got an awful lot accomplished around the house and spent a lot of quality time with the kids, but I was going from early morning until pretty late without much of a break. Once I got the kids all in bed, though, I was determined to do some sculpting. Between the last session and this one, I took the Teen Lantern piece almost completely down to metal, and I'm liking it better, though I am still not happy with it. I feel much better about the pose and body language after the revisions; it doesn't feel nearly as static as it did, but there are still parts that I don't fully grok the shapes - where my brain is having trouble interpreting the two dimensional reference image into a solid shape.

I am actually starting to like it from about the abdomen down quite a bit, and feel like I'm starting to understand the shape the upper body needs to be. The one thing that is really throwing me is the fact that the forearms are so much larger than the upper arms, which is how it is in the reference image. With the legs, having the distal portion of the limb be much bigger wasn't hard to accommodate, and seems to flow well. But with the arms, I just can't picture a way to go from skinny teen-girl upper arms to those Popeye-esque forearms without it looking wonky. Large forearms are not particularly feminine. The the artist who drew the piece managed to pull it off, so I know it's possible, but I'm not getting how yet.

On top of that, I have a baking quandary, owing to my lack of experience with this media and my tendency to start many sculpts but finish few. I know that many professional sculptors who work in polymer clay do multiple bakes, but I'm always scared of doing a bake because it seems so permanent. I don't know how difficult it is to change the piece after baking, and I just don't know when I should do a bake. Part of me thinks that once I get the basic shape right, I should do a bake and sand and smooth to see if any surfaces need to be filled or any of the lines modified. Doing so would also give me the flexibility to work without the armature stand, which would let me work more easily on several parts of the sculpture such as the back of the feet, the buttocks, and between the shoulder blades. But I'm a bit scared of doing it, and just don't know how to judge whether it's "done enough" for a first bake. I think I'll need to post to some forums to get some advice on that account.

It did feel good to sculpt. I try not to go more then one day a week without doing some sculpting, or at least some sketching if I can't sculpt, but circumstances sometimes make that an unachievable goal. I wanted to keep going, but I've got to work tomorrow, and I've got all the various kid-duties that my wife ordinarily handles along with what's shaping up to be a murderous workweek, so I'm going to exercise restraint... unless I can't sleep.