One of the key projects I had to complete as part of the New Masters Academy sculpting program is to model a copy of Michelangelo’s David statue’s left eye. This is no small task–the video tutorial is 3 hours long! Before I could even begin, I had to order the plaster model of the David Eye online at the Museum Company.
Then I constructed the platform to mount both the model and the armature for the eye. I’m not exactly a pro at building things, but it’s a given that you will have to learn to use a few power tools if you are going to master sculpting. 🙂
I built up and blocked in my main forms and then had a coaching session with Johanna from New Masters Academy. She asked me to put the whole project on hold while I sculpted a couple of Poblano peppers. Sculpting organic objects is great preparation for modeling the human body. I needed to learn to see and measure curves before attempting this project.
So I spent the next four weeks working on the peppers with my half finished David Eye staying soft ( I prayed!) under saran wrap, plastic bags and at one point super damp towels to re-soften it. It was starting to get too far into that ‘leather hard’ stage. I sure didn’t want to have to start from scratch!
Finally, this Saturday, I started working through the rest of the tutorial. I’ve actually watched the whole thing at least twice which is 5 hours of just ‘watching’.
I’m not done yet, but I couldn’t wait to show off my progress! You can easily see my errors. I have a lot of fixing to do and plan to work on it this afternoon.
When that’s done, I’ll get as much drawing from Glenn Vilippu’s Drawing Construction of the Head series at NMA. I also ordered Peck’s anatomy. Fascinating stuff! When I’m done, Johanna says I can start on the sculpting the human skull!
Donna C. Rodgers, Sculptor 