Simon Lee Workshop - Week 4,5 & 6

I found after doing the 2" skull that the much smaller head on my character was easier and I am getting a better feel for handling the clay.  After roughing in the head I then went back to adjusting the pose and also thinking of the overall composition placing my character so he has just landed on a rocky ledge causing a rock slide.

Feeling quite happy with this roughed in stage I now need to work on the anatomy. In Week 4 videos Simon showed his tools and also how you can make your own loop tools from thin armature wire or guitar strings attached to wooden dowels or anything that would make a handle.

Week 5 videos went over further refinement using loop and ball stylus tools along with isopropyl alcohol to smooth out hard edges and tool marks. In Week 6 videos Simon also discussed the more advanced stages of moving into multiple character compositions and also adding other characters and props to reinforce your main character.  He also showed some very cool examples of his own sculptures which were amazing and very inspiring. One of this weeks videos showed how to approach sculpting hands and he does this without any armature wire as he feels the use of wire would stiffen the gesture.

For me the next step is to see how far I can take my anatomy knowledge with this character and then I shall move onto the next one and keep practising these stages of Simon's process. I do not have the skills yet to design like this from my imagination with drawing so it is pretty exciting to have got to this stage so quickly. I guess that is the beauty of Simon Lee's design approach and I highly recommend his online course.

Simon Lee Workshop - Week 3

The homework for Week 3 was to sculpt a very small humanoid head. I found this very challenging which is why it ended up taking me a few days to do. At first I kept squashing areas I had already sculpted but I found that if I let the clay get quite hard it was easier to work at this scale. Symmetry was also a big issue for me and something to work on as I progress.

I started of just aiming to do a skull but then I liked the idea of the dropped jaw, and arched menacing brows which made the sculpting even more fiddly for me. What fun though, I just kept at it and I was quite pleased to get to this stage as this skull is only 2" high. Next I have to sculpt my head for my maquette which is about half the size of this one, so it is going to be even more challenging. Simon recommends you do at least 10 heads before you get comfortable with the process.

Simon Lee Workshop - Week 2

This week I have been working on posing.  Although I am using a much thicker wire I have still tried to think about the natural balance of the pose so that my sculpt would be balanced in real life.  It is challenging with the hardness of the clay but this stage is a lot of fun to do. I could have tried out different poses for ages but as I am already a week behind I just did a couple.

Pose 1 my first attempt.

Pose 2
I got the inspiration for this pose from a 20 min life drawing I had done earlier in the week. Toying with the idea of giving him Wolverine  hands or knives of some kind.  I ended up losing a lot of the anatomy I did have after doing this pose but I am hoping I can sculpt it back.