Life Drawing (5) - Clay

I was quite excited when I heard that we were making a clay figure and a clay head this week as I enjoyed using clay through secondary school, but I'd never used clay for life drawing, so I was looking forward to finding out how different it might be.

We used terracotta clay, which I'd only tried for the first time in W2 for Applied Arts, but I liked the consistency of it. I'm used to using krank clay, which is quite grainy, so I liked the change of using a smooth clay and because we weren't firing the clay we didn't have to worry about trapping air bubbles and the thickness of the clay so we could make a solid figure, which was definitely easier.

First we looked at making a reclining figure. This meant making a basic armature and then building up the figure by moving around the model after set intervals. It was strange switching my life drawing thinking process from 2D to 3D and having to consider how it would look from every angle, but I really loved working with clay. As we only had a set time at each position around the model it encouraged you to work quickly, so the figure had energy and form because of the rough application of clay, which I think actually has a nice textured look to it - it reminded me of claymation at stages.

Next we undertook the clay head. I'd made a few before, but these had been over several weeks, using the coil method and photos and so had been pretty hard to manage as the clay would start to dry out or sink under the weight. Luckily the process for this head was easier as we attached a newspaper ball to the top of a stand to mold the head around.

The stand with the top covered in newspaper

We used the stand by covering the newspaper, which forms the dome of the head so that the stand doesn't poke through the top, in clay. Then we built up the basic form of the face like the chin and shape of the head before building up the features in a similar way to the form of the reclining figure - of having a set time to focus on one view of the model before she moved, of working quite quickly to create the basic form. As this process continued the head changed from a generic head to one that started to take on the look of the model.  I didn't get to finish the head, but I really loved working on it. It was sometimes a bit difficult as all you wanted to do was make the face, but you had to wait for the model to turn around again. It was really rewarding though to see it build up and start to resemble the model and because you had to think in 3D it gave me a better sense of how the face is constructed and the forms of it, which should help with my observational work. Plus not having to worry about it exploding in the kilm was a positive as well. 

The head in progress:

The head at the end of the session:

The ear on this side is a bit too far back

As we weren't firing the heads at the end of the session we had to destroy them, which I found a bit hard as I really enjoyed making my head. But as I pulled it off the stand the newspaper started to look like a brain and then the face started to remind me of one of the damaged robots in the film AI during the Flesh Fair scene, which was a bit disturbing and it made me feel a bit sad, but it was interesting. It was the same process of trying to imitate life, of actively making and then destroying - I've never really had to do this with my art before, there's always been an optimism that whatever we made at school would be finished and that we would keep it forever. Maybe I just got too attached to my head as other people were happy to destroy theirs.

Deconstructing the head:

Having worked with clay before I'd thought that I'd be almost desensitised to using it, but I loved working with it again and learning how to use it for the different purpose of life drawing as well as using a different kind of clay. I'd really like to use clay in life drawing again.