Philippe Faraut, a phenomenal sculptor, has just released a new book called Mastering Portraiture. He has released a video showing the process of sculpting one of the pieces used in the book:

Click to watch in full size
I'm lucky enough to have had Philippe as a teacher and also consider him my friend. As a result I was given an early look at the new book being advertised by that video.

Now, I was already quite a big fan of Philippe's first book. I read it regularly and often recommend it to others. But, I was a little nervous when Philippe asked me to give him my honest opinion on his new book. As an author, I understand the value of that kind of feedback, however, so I was determined to be critical and give him the harsh feedback he wanted.

I completely and utterly failed to find any flaw in the book other than a few easily corrected typos. Mastering Portraiture, completely and absolutely floored me. I stayed up into the early morning hours reading it on the day it came in the mail because I just couldn't put it down. Philippe has pulled together and distilled down the most important things that he's learned from his years of sculpting experience, his extensive research into the anatomy and psychology of facial expression, and his keen observations on the affects of aging and the characteristics of race. The result is just unbelievably good.

It's a book that would be worth buying just for the privilege of looking at the pictures. The sculptures that Philippe created for the book are phenomenal and the photography and printing are gorgeous. But all those lovely pictures are accompanied by words, and those words tell a story that will both help you and inspire you to take your sculpting to a new level.

You should know that this is not a beginner's book, however. If you don't have some experience and haven't ever touched hands to clay, then buy Philippe's first book and put some time in sculpting first, But if you've got some experience and want to become better, then you absolutely should check Mastering Portraiture out. It covers things I've never seen covered in a sculpting book and the information is easy to digest and understand. There's no unnecessary jargon, it just reads like the words of a patient teacher. Despite having sculpted for years and having taken several classes with Philippe, every chapter held new information and inspired me to want to try new things.

I don't often gush over products, even those created by people I like, but this is a book that's really worth checking out. It's truly extraordinary; a beautiful book that I will cherish for years and recommend without reservation.

I've started another book. I'm going to try and keep it from taking over my life this time. I've been sculpting the last few nights. I've got a full-size bust in water clay, but the other night, I just didn't feel like working on it. On a whim, I decided to work with wax. Now, I've tried to get into wax literally a dozen times. I have all the tools and several kinds of wax, but I always get frustrated with it. I've never gotten over the learning curve far enough that it became enjoyable.

Which frustrated me, because I like a lot of things about wax. I like that they don't need an armature, that they don't dry out, and that wax holds incredible amounts of detail.

Well, oddly enough, I'm thoroughly enjoying it now. I've spent two evenings sculpting on a little piece. It's not coming together very fast, but it is coming together. I'll post pictures in a few days of what I've got so far. It's not particularly impressive in its own right, but it's exciting for me that I finally seem to be coming to terms with wax and can actually create something with it.

One of the larger sculpture collections in the United States is contained at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale California. Forest Lawn is the cemetery of Hollywood's rich and famous, and much of the park is off-limits to the public. This is understandable given that several very popular figures with cult-like followings are interred there, but it's also a shame that so much sculpture is squirreled away where only grieving graveside visitors of the famous and wealthy ever get to see it.

© Jeff Lowe / Casual Clicks

As with many cemeteries in this country, much of the mortuary sculptures are reproductions of famous pieces, or "stock" sculptures sold specifically as mortuary sculpture. However, because of the wealth of the clientele, and their affinity for the arts, there are also a great many original works, and some are quite stunning.

© Life Magazine

One photographer named Jeff Lowe has a number of images of sculpture at Forest Lawn on his Flickr account. It's quite a nice collection, and the photographs are beautiful. Unfortunately, it's a small sampling of the sculpture available there. You can click here to go to his Flickr account.

© Life Magazine

Life Magazine's photographers have, over the years, taken a number of photographs of the sculpture at Forest Lawn. You can get to those pictures by clicking this link thanks to the fact that the Life Magazine archives are now available on Google Images.

A while back, I posted that I was involved with a project that wouldn't leave me much time for sculpting or posting here for a while. Boy was I right about that; I never intended to be away this long. The book took a lot longer than I expected it to, and there has been continued demands on my time even after the book was finished that I never anticipated. Things like dealing with addenda and answering reader letters and questions has taken a lot of my time lately.

The book has been phenomenally successful. Computer programming books don't typically sell a lot of copies, but ours has been selling better than most. We've spent most of the last three months with an Amazon rank below #200, and have often been at or below #100. I haven't received any royalty checks yet, so I don't know exactly how many we've sold, but based on our BookScan numbers, it looks like we've sold almost 18,000 copies in a little under four months. It's no Harry Potter, but for a programming book, that's a smash.

The other side of the equation is that my work life has gotten much busier as a result of the success of the book, and that hasn't left me much time for sculpting or posting.

So, long story short, my life has been hectic, which is why you haven't seen many posts here. I have been doing some sculpting, though, and I thought I would post some pictures of the piece I'm working on. These are going to be in backwards chronological order, so the first pictures are what it looks like today, and then as you scroll down, you'll go backwards in time. You can click on the picture for a slightly larger image. These are just cell-phone snapshots, so the quality isn't great - sorry about that.

Just a little update on the piece I've been spending time on lately. The first version of her head looked like Samuel L. Jackson, which just wouldn't do. I've made it more feminine, but it's obviously still pretty rough. I haven't paid much attention to the lower-half yet, the legs are pretty much a mess, but the top half is slowly starting to come together.

You can see from the pictures that I've garroted the head to work on the facial details better.

There are a lot of things I don't like, but quite a few that I actually do, which is not typical for me, so I'm pretty happy with this one so far.