Baby Sculpture

Sculpting baby chub was one of the funnest sculpting exercises that we did in Mike's sculpture class. There's something very appealing about the cherubim qualities of babies. These qualities make us all want to smile at babies and fawn all over them in general. That's some truly awesome power that these little guys possess, and capturing that elusive allure and appeal in sculpture was the entire point of our exercise.

Mike pointed out that if you don't hit these baby qualities just right, your baby sculpture will just look sort of creepy. To avoid the creepyness, here are some things that Mike told us to help our baby sculptures actually look like babies: lots of baby chub, creases where you'd normally see joints (wrists and ankles), dimples where you'd normally see knee caps and/or shoulders on adults, big head, small face, chubby fingers that taper to a point.

It was certainly a challenge keeping the baby looking and feeling like a baby, but it was a lot of fun too.  One last thing I'd like to point out is that we didn't use any reference when we started this exercise.  We just jumped into sculpting babies (with no armature either).  Hopefully, my scale on this sculpt is somewhere in the general ballpark, or even the ballpark parking lot.  The lesson here is to always remember that reference is your friend.

While we're on the subject of babies, I just can't pass up this opportunity to add a special announcement to this post. My wife and I are expecting our first baby. It's a girl, and she's actually due any day now, and we're both very excited. So, now that you all know, don't be too surprised if you see some baby-room related workshop posts in the near future. :)

Cheers!
~Tony Preciado

*UPDATE*
My daughter, Scarlett Danger Anderson Preciado, was born on Monday, October 4th! :)

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