Its taken longer than I’d thought, but I’m nearly finished…
I’ve nearly finished my clay piece, probably just this afternoon and I’ll have finished sculpting it in clay. I’m hoping the mould maker Lorenzo will come by this afternoon so we can discuss making the mould, then it will need to go to be cast in wax, at which point I think I may have some work to do on the inside of the piece…
It is very exciting and a bit of a relief that the end is in sight. On thursday I invited Nigel down to have a look at it – and he commented on whether I wanted to get the changes in rhythm and texture that there were on the model. We talked about how to get the texture of the striations – and he suggested that I could make a tool.
On friday I did a lot of experiments, filling notches in my ‘hollowing/carving’ tool, carving grooves into a piece of wood, and one end of my large wooden tool. At times it was going well, and it enabled me to get the texture of the piece, but at other times I was being a bit frustrated.
Yesterday (monday) morning I was a little expectant as I knew that Helaine was back and she hadn’t seen the piece since the friday before last, when I’d only done about a day of building up the clay. I was looking forward to her input, I was interested to know whether she thought I should move away more from the model, or keep using it as my point of reference. And I was a little nervous to know what she thought about it
She arrived mid-morning with a visitor – Tom Flynn – who she described as an important critic. Straight away my blood pressure went up a few bars, but I tried to keep calm to get the most out of the opportunity of 2 sets of eyes looking at it.
The overall judgement was the the form and shape was working very well, but that in places the surface texture was letting the piece down – in particular in the area that I had been working on the most! Tom said some really interesting and useful comments – my model had an amazing amount of tension and energy, which would be good to translate through to the clay piece. I think he really liked the model and they both agreed that I should try to get it cast into bronze as well.
Helaine also mentioned that the editing and changes that I’d done relative to the model were working well. We talked a bit about how to get the texture and the uneven striations, and she told me that in the past she had used metal combs to good effect (I had shown her my attempts at tools).
When they were leaving Helaine asked if I was still doing the life class drawing and expressed an interest in seeing my drawings. As I had my sketchbook there, I offered to show them both, and as Tom was keen to see them too, I got it out with a bit of trepidation – I was suddenly worried about what failed embarrasing experiments I’d end up showing them. But they both mmm-ed and ah-ed appreicatively. Tom said it was great to see someone drawing and bemoaned the fact that so few art students are drawing.
It was also interesting to see how the drawings had evolved over the 6 or so weeks, and their relationship with the work I was doing. In the later ones I’ve been trying to draw the curves and structures of the figures, I’m sure influenced by finding forms and curves that are striated in my piece.
It all went well, and Tom seemed very interesting and easy going, but I still felt like I’d had at least 5 expressos after they left!
Yesterday evening I googled him, and found a wonderful catalogue of Almuth’s work which he had written the text to, which I read cover to cover.
http://www.tomflynn.co.uk/AlmuthTebbenhoffCatalogue.pdf
(Lunch now ready so I will continue this later)
