Terracotta Sculpting Tutorial Creating a Classical Female Figure Part 1 Build and Gesture

Welcome back and today we're going to start a new sculpture. A standing figure and I'm setting it up putting a piece of plastic down so the water clay does not soak through the wood. This way I can keep reusing this wooden platform for many years as long as you don't get water in there. You could also paint it so it doesn't become stained because once water gets into the wood and the wood is unprepared it tends to warp and do all sorts of things that you do not want in a sculpture. And another reason to use this plastic bag technique is that once your clay sculpture starts to dry it'll contract a little bit and you can still easily remove it. If you have it on a board it stands it sometimes sticks to it and cracks the sculpture so you're better off using this. It's really like one of the best tips I could possibly give you on starting a sculpture. The clay I'm using is a standard red clay. This is my last bag of red clay. I'm gonna need to buy some more and a lot of people have asked me what clay it is. It's low fire with grog and I really like the grog in the clay. It gives it a little bit more strength and it helps the firing. I have not had any issues firing ever since I started using this clay. I do prefer the way the grogless clay feels but at the same time I'm better off using this. The reason I put that brush down is I'm going to use my paintbrush my bristle paintbrush that I tend to use for my sculptures as a way of measuring the figure. Two of these brushes is going to be the entire figure so it's going to be a fairly large sculpture. I like to put the platform in there and just kind of scrape it down a bit and make sure that it's even. You're better off making a platform that's a little bit on the thicker side especially for a standing figure because that is the strength of the figure. It has to attach to the platform and we're going to have some problems because clay itself is not strong enough to stand with two tiny little feet on the platform. You're going to have to use something else so that's going to be the motif we're going to be looking for as we start sculpting. This time I am going to just put a couple of chunks of clay like this. I cut blocks directly from the clay bag and the reason I did this is that I just want a way to move up the sculpture really easily. Remember there's no armature inside this clay so the reason I'm doing this is that it's just going to have a little bit of support and notice that the armature that I have on there I attached it to the back of the clay. This way it's going to hold up that sculpture while I sculpt. There's no way I could sculpt this without it because it's too thin. Normally when I build something without an armature at all supporting it on the sides I tend to build a pyramid up. A pyramid is a very strong powerful structure so that's the reason but with this it gives me a little bit more flexibility. One thing you're still going to have an issue with is the clay will drop because there's so much weight pushing down and I divided this initial section into two pieces. I let one day kind of just dry a little bit I put a bag over it but I left it slightly open that way if firmed up overnight and that is very needed. Sometimes you really have to get a feel for the water clay and it's one of the things that I really enjoy about water clay it's so flexible so fluid so painterly at the same time. At first I am not really working on the proportions just yet all I want is to establish the entire figure slightly undersized and have a structure. I know the middle where it is it's a pubic synthesis that's going to be my midway from that midway I can establish the top of the head. I also want to attach the arms and the head just to give it a direction because in this model she's actually one of my favorite models that I got from Post Space and she is on a shorter side of the human body and she is absolutely perfect. She's very curvy and I'm going to try to get this curviness into the final sculpture. So at this point I am going to establish a little bit more of the anatomy like the breasts but not yet put in any of the actual proportions just yet. Remember the human body could be divided and measured from the head that's how the old masters did it they took the measurements from the head and then they counted down. I took a cheat right from the beginning I divided the figure right in half every human figure tends to be around the pubic synthesis so if you take that measurement you'll get a rough estimate. So we are seeing a structure coming out and the issue that you're going to have in building something like this is removing parts of the ground or closer to the platform because you still want clay supporting it and you've seen some of my old videos where I will just put like a chunk of clay holding the structure up until it gets a little bit firmer and with water clay you can have the top part very moist very wet and have the bottom part that you have firmed up by just leaving it open. That's the flexibility of the water clay it's just absolutely the most fluid type of clay you could possibly have and with this sort of clay you tend to work faster at least I do so in this model she's looking to the right slightly down and she's got very long hair which is going to help us. In antiquity sculptures are usually held up with some sort of structure because they're just not strong enough even marbles are not strong enough to hold up just from that weight of two resting points. So I'm adding a little bit to the head and at this point I think I need to let this firm up overnight. This is what I do. I put a couple of bags over my clay model and I make sure that I kind of touch the clay so I take my hands and I just kind of push the clay push the bag into the clay itself and you see there's still some openings. I have another bag that's much bigger that's going to go over the armature and cover the entire sculpture. You don't have to do this if you don't have an armature but it just one bag is enough but I find that keeping everything nice and closed keeps the clay moist for the next session. In the next session we're going to be working on proportion for this particular model so stay tuned make sure you hit like and subscribe and I'll see you on the next video.