Technique in Clay

[Sculptor7]

When using clay (plasticene or water) I find that my approach parallels my work in oil painting in respect to the desire to achieve a look that appears effortless. Many times I will rub out an overworked section in an oil painting and re-paint it with more boldness and assurance. The same holds true for sculpting in clay. It pains me to look at an uncertain weak production, regardless of the medium. Somewhere I read that sculpting (modelling in clay), is the act of adding not subtracting. Likewise, there are few, if any, concave surfaces on a human form. The full logical surfaces surrounding the eyes and mouth are what, to me, creates a pleasing portrait. So many times I will see sculptures that present a face with the eyes just scooped out, and usually too close together, with no real structure. One can see this anywhere in the cheap garden sculptures at discount stores.

Also, in regard to hair, I like to think of it as a mass, a structure, rather than a series of scratches, whether in a clay portrait or an oil.

Anyone else feel the same way?

[evaldart]

In figuration (painting AND sculpture), just as in the most non-objective of abstraction, the negotiation of bumps and hollows is the ONLY thing the art is "about". The pleasant or grotesque "wrapping" of all this is exactly a weakener of the experience. An individual properly positioned in defiance of nature is struggling for ways to give substance to voids and ways to "void" some substance. This is the push-pull that drives every pure creative effort. Attention to "facades" accomplishes nothing but the facilitating of the experience, a thing (a notion) held up by it eggshell. Yes, Sculptor, the "structure" is what every determined artist is after; but it is not there to simply be exposed or identified (by any amount of skilful digging) it is there to be established. And it is NOT the object or artifact that the said structure eventually props-up...it props the consciousness. But that phiolophical armature wavers rickety too soon, and must be maintained, by another laborious (never effortless) encounter, and then another. The "act of adding" indeed - growing weight, burden, recollections of thrills...all chained to the ankles that we drag about as we perform, dutifully, our human chores.

[KatyL]

Figurative art is sometimes one thing, and sometimes another. Is the wrapping the weakener of experience? I'd say this is true if you are talking about a building. Or, It depends on whether you are a surface or structure type person. A pit bull is not a chihuahua. Two very different dogs.

I don't approach art with a clip board of essays from the latest academics. I do what feels right to me. What suits, and serves the piece you are doing? Is mass better than line? Depends. What works best in the piece?

I consider artists as "authors" of their work. The author makes the decisions and those are based on a long string of variables. What one artist likes or used is not necessarily good or useful to your work. Development is evolution of ideas and skills.

There are certainly artists who are very "minimal" with their depictions (I assume we mean of human figures) for instance, the 72 or so figures by Degas, one of the greatest "gesture" artist were fairly minimalistic when studied up-close.

Some artists create a very minimal, structure heavy type of art, others are more obsessive about the surface. Ron Mueck for instance uses hair as though making dummies. So did Duane Hanson. Why? Why not. It has been a goal of art for a long time, to depict "perfectly" so why not?

On the other hand, why?

[BobClyatt]

One of the techniques I learned in a master workshop was to stand back and squint at the model and at your piece, looking for 'value' changes in the model and (assuming model and piece are in the same light) ensuring that your own piece pops in or out with equivalent value. You might have heard this in painting classes, too. I know it sounds like a trick, and it certainly is not at the level of Eveldart's comments, but i have found it helps me to get some integrity in the form in the end.

Your comment on surface, though -- getting bold confident strokes instead of a maze of confused/over-worked ones is a good point. I would say it also depends on the medium you are working in. I can have more nuanced surface texture in bronze pieces, whereas the same surface will simply look confused or unfinished when I fire and glaze my figures in clay.