Sculpture Class

In the Fall of 2009, I took an evening sculpture class. The class was taught by San Francisco Bay Area sculptor Michael Murnane. Now, Mike just happens to be a good friend of mine, but that aside, I can say without any reservation that Mike is one hell of a damn good sculptor. Of course, Mike's credentials don't hinge my humble opinion. His work speaks for itself. So, when the opportunity to take Mike's class presented itself, I was pretty excited to take part in it—and I'm glad I did.

The class was a lot of fun. We did a bunch of different sculpting exercises that were geared at teaching us different things, like: planning, anatomy, and design. We also used a variety of different sculpting materials: wet-clay, soft sculpey, and magic-sculpt (fast drying two-part putty epoxy).

Here are some of the pieces I did in the class. None of them are what you'd call a masterpiece, but that wasn't my goal. My goal was to generate several sculpts, try some new sculpting techniques, and also learn as much as I could about sculpture, anatomy, and design.

This is a freestyle bust.

The one on below was intended to teach us about working in relief sculpture. It was also a lesson in speed. We used magic-sculpt, and after you mix it, you only have about two hours of working time.

For the sculpture below, we used a piece of fabric as reference.

This next piece was an exercise where we start with an entire block of wet clay and then we carve away at it until we get to the sculpt within. Turns out that there was a monkey in mine.

Like I said, the class was a lot of fun. I learned a lot, and I'm planning on using what I've learned in my next personal sculpt.

There's one other sculpt that I made in the class, but I'll show you that one in my next post.

Cheers,
~Tony Preciado