Good morning all my fans and friends. I was once more able to drag my poor old decrepit body out of the horizontal position and stumble to the kitchen to retrieve my first cup of the elixir of life. After which I noticed that the grass was still green and without a doubt growing. I know this because my poor little Jack Russel partially disappeared as he made his way into the jungle to take his morning constitutional. The look he flashed back at me as he headed in strongly informed me that I needed to do something about this situation in the near future. Maybe I'll get him some safari gear!
As I consumed my second cup I thought to myself that this would be a good time to discuss the differences between model building and model sculpting. In model building most of the time you are working with a kit that was produced for you by someone else. This kit will usually have a number of parts that need to placed together to create the model. There are usually a set of instruction to guide you along as you go so that the finished product resembles the picture on the box or something like it. In many cases there will even be a list of paint colors that will be needed to finish the model to some close likeness of that so shown. All of this can an is a lot of fun and very enjoyable. But it really is not the same as creating your own figurine.
To do that we have to learn the art of sculpting! In the case of a human or animal figure we first must create a armature this is basically a wire skeleton on which we then place either clay of some other medium such as slow drying epoxy and then we must form the shape of the figure.
This is by far a lot more work, but the rewards are staggering. When you are done and look at your creation it almost makes you feel like a god! Well maybe that is a little strong, but you get my meaning.
I am going to add some pictures of a couple of sculptures that I produced several years ago. The one is a figure of a Celtic Warrior/Hunter around circa 100 bc. The other is actually a three dimensional story that I call "The Bandits of Starvation Creek" in this story their is an old soldier from around the Civil War period, he has mustered out of the service and decided to try his luck in the gold fields. One day he takes a beak and does some fishing on Starvation Creek, he catches a nice batch of trout and decides that he will give panning a shot. He sits down on a bunch of rocks along side of the creek after setting down all of his gear and the fish and proceeds to start panning. Sure enough, he hits it rich and there is "color" in his pan. But, and yes there is always a but, what he does not realize is that the rocks he is sitting on conceals a hugh nugget and that while he is busy with his panning the two little "bandits" in the form of two baby raccoons are sealing his dinner. These were done with the medium known as Sculpty Clay a polymer clay that is oven fireable and they are in the 75 to 95 mm scale approximately. Both were a lot of fun to do and very rewarding emotionally.
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