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tecciztecatl — Torso, front view
Published: 2008-05-25 11:15:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 6375; Favourites: 71; Downloads: 132
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Description
Front view of the torso. I made this for another college project that fell through. Instead I've decided to carve part of it into an outcrop of very hard stone (andesite) in a forest in the Lake District.Related content
Comments: 44
this is impressive!
how long did it take you to do it?
and how big is he?
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Thanks! I'm not sure how long, I worked on it at home in the evenings while I was at college so it was bits and piece here and there. He's about 11in/28cm high. 1/4 lifeize I think.
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ahh i see your welcome!.. and what type of clay did you use?
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This one's actually carved out of a block of plaster. I hadn't had much practice with clay when I started it but I'd been carving for a few years so I just went with what I knew.
I made a mold of it which has now ripped a bit so I'm thinking of taking a cast in wax and then resculpting it to fix the mistakes I made in the carving, then I can make another mold.
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ahh i see
carving is harder than sculpting i suppose? wow.
awesome
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I think it depends on where you start from. My first mediums were chalk and candle wax so I became familiar with carving - I hated clay when I first tried it, I found it really frustrating till my college tutors showed me how it was done.
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ahh yeah i hate clay too.. but i started to like it my teacher just showed me how to work on those messy clay..
but i think im gonna like working with wax. i just need to see how to work with it.
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It seems like wax is a very versatile medium. I'm sure you must be aware of trev solo: [link] I'd ask him if you have any questions, he's very free with advice and must be among the most talented sculptors in any medium on DA. I've never worked smaller than 1/4 scale and found that really tough, but he gets astonishing results at 1/6.
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wow yeah
ooo! yeah trev is awesome!!
ive been talking to him since 6 months ago.
he gave me lots of suggestions for sculpting in different medium
oh yeah. trust me working in smaller scale like 1/6 is a real tough work.
most of my works are 10 to 12 inches but its hard to get a perfect likeness like his stuff..
now im doing it on a bigger size
and its not bad. i think when you get used to working on a smaller scale, it would be a lot easier working on a big scales.
more bigger scale sculpture for my classes and 1/6 for my own projects.
i think you must be aware of andy bergeholtz he is insanely good!
trev really admires his work.
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Wow, you really have done your research! It's great that you have such enthusiasm - there's a guy in the year below me at college who's shown himself to have much greater spatial skills than anyone else the college has seen in many years (according to the head of carving) but he just doesn't seem to care enough to find out about what it's possible to achieve in stone. I find it so frustrating you know, I'd love to have that kind of ability.
I do know of monsterpappa, it's a shame he hasn't updated in such a long time.
Glad you're working on a large scale too - what do your classes involve?
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thank you! yeah i want to try all medium. so i need a lot of research on sculpting
aah that is too bad..
yeah he hasn't updated any work...
well actually. its not a sculpting class.
i made them a sculpting class.. I'm the only student who does sculpting in our high school
they don't have a sculpting class, i take 3 art classes, intermediate drawing, art and design, and intermediate art, but all of them mostly do drawings and printmaking and other stuff. but not sculpting.
so i talked to each of those art teacher to change my program. and i made a deal with one of them.lol (because she doesn't want to let me go, i told her earlier if she doesn't let me sculpt i will leave her class i don't know why that teacher doesn't want to let me drop her drawing class). the counselor and the school doesn't know anything about it.
its only between me and them.
they give me a report card grade by just looking at my progress of sculpting at school
for my next project, i will be doing a 40 inches half naked sculpture of me wearing jeans. using laguna red clay starting on monday
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That's the way to do it! If you can talk your teachers into letting you get your way I'll bet you'll go far with your sculpting career. You've got the technical ability, drive and vision - the other half of the game is convincing people to buy your work or to commission you to make something.
When's the deadline for the sculpture of yourself?
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yeah! thank you!
yup convincing people to buy my work is kind of hard.
i dont really have deadline for sculpture of myself. but i have to do it as soon as possible. the art competition for my school is coming up and i have to hurry finish it.
next week is already winter break. so i only have this week to at least sculpt the shape of my body so then when i come back from winter break i dont have to do much changes on the body
the problem is im using clay.
and winter break is 2 weeks.
im afraid its going to dry up a bit. at home i will sculpt using sculpey.
do you also sculpt using soapstone ?
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Good luck with that, I'm looking forward to seeing the result. There's a book you might find helpful with figure studies btw - modelling and sculpting the human figure by Edouard Lanteri. It's pretty cheap on amazon, and was written by the guy who taught Rodin like a hundred years ago or so. Obviously it's very traditional but I learned loads from it.
You might already know, but you can wrap the clay up in a wet towel or cloth and then wrap that up in plastic and it should keep it moist.
I've never tried soapstone but I do know of a supplier here in London. I've been meaning to give it a go for ages, sometimes it has really nice marbling effects, and takes a great surface despite being so soft.
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oh wow thank you! its a good book! i took a look at it on amazon.yeah, but i never work on those clays for a long periods of time,
i might ost some pictures after the winter break
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I could stare at this for hours. 
I love how you made it seem fleshy and soft. The subtleties that you achieve are breathtaking.
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Thank you so much! I think it mainly comes from a difference in the sources of my inspiration. Most sculptors on da work on figures from graphic novels and the preference is very much for intricately detailed anatomy; finely corded muscles and so on. I look to Renaissance Italy for inspiration where the focus was on softly rendering the anatomical forms underlying the surface. To be fair though it means my work looks about a century behind the times
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Each time I visit your work I am more impressed and more enthusiastic about improving my own.
John
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Thankyou! And for the fave too
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oh my God! i thought traditional art and paintings is kind rare here .. but good sculpting is almost rare in the whole world not only on DA!
u revived me with this!
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Wow, thank you! And for watching too
For some reason sculpture doesn't interest anywhere near as many people as painting and other forms of 2D art. Maybe something to do with how a painting opens a window onto an entire world of someone's imagination but sculpture is a physical projection of an entity from that realm and can only be properly understood if you can move around it and experience the space it occupies. Also to touch it - Henry Moore wanted people to be able to touch his work but of course no-one's allowed to touch anything in a gallery
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i was just thinking about Henry Moore!!
i agree with you ..
yes... it is so sad that they go against his wish of letting us not to touch .. feel .. experience ...
art must never be bound to such regulations and formalities .. or at least some sorts of it .. it's against our nature and passion to unite with surroundings .. and turning what seems cold and dead to a vibrant vivacious live meaningful creations... 2D, 3D, or even 4D ... (:
do u allow ppl to touch ur creations?
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I can understand why it's not allowed - there's a bronze statue of a saint in the vatican whose foot has been severely eroded by the endless thousands of pilgrims. And Michelangelo's Dying Slave in the Louvre is so badly discoloured by oils from groping fingers that the forms are almost unreadable without a strong top-down light. I was really disappointed when I saw it a couple of years ago.
But the desire to touch is understandable - probably necessary. In a way it can make a work even more appealing since we're enticed by what our eyes see but always denied the understanding and closure that our hands would give us.
I always allow people to touch my work but then I'm a student and the hands of the few people who know of me won't make any difference! If I did something in marble I'd definitely be more protective of it, but the carving I'm doing in a forest in the Lake District in England is in very hard stone (almost like granite) and is also quite remote - the fact that it's open to the elements and to whoever might chance upon it invites a full visual and tactile response. There wouldn't be anyone around to tell them to stop, or to explain why it's even there in the first place.
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I know I souldnt mess with your comments, but I really love the way you see the art of sculpture. Really amazing perspective.
The hability to touch means that the sculpture exists in a realm of time and space. It's the most closest simbolization of the real world, becouse it interact with the world that it's re-interpreting.
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It's definitely the form of art I relate to most strongly. I think it's hard for people to fully interact with sculpture here on DA because it should be appreciated in person. Painting doesn't lose anywhere near as much by being reproduced in photos so it's not easy to communicate the full presence a sculpture has in the world.
Thanks for watching by the way
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oh! out in the forest! you're carving it there for that purpose?
your out of the traffic light cement boxes nature makes such experience as wild as it can be!
i am happy and thrilled to know that ... maybe one day i would visit it...
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Thankyou! Yes, I wanted it to be a sort of mysterious surprise for whoever's walking through the forest, maybe even in hundreds or thousands of years from now. It would be a completely private experience for them, just the viewer, the carving and the trees and river and moss and huge broken rocks all around. It's quite a simple carving of a ram's head, so I don't think it would work on it's own, but its environment makes it what it is, silently watching through the years, the surfaces slowly aging as it becomes more and more a part of the forest.
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oh my god! i dont know what to call this idea! more than interesting? i dont know .. i need something stronger .. but creating something with an intended 4th dimension "time" is definitely something i did not encounter this with some of the artists surrounding me ... maybe u're not the only one now .. but im happy to be one of those exposed to your thoughts. i assume u're intending to leave it anonymous? would u like ppl in thousand years to find real actual documentation of the work or you want it to remain mysterious?
so the rams in ur gallery are made for the forest .. now i can relate things (:
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I think the ancient Egyptians did it long before me 
Over in the US they've carved their presidents' faces into Mount Rushmore, but that's imposed, forced onto the surroundings. Maybe I'm among the first to do it on such a small and intimate scale.
And yes I'd much prefer it to remain anonymous. I don't think there's anything that would survive that long that would connect me to the area, and even if there was my name and biography will mean nothing in a thousand years time. The only reference I'm ever tempted to leave is the date in Roman numerals, to anchor the carvings in time but I'm not sure I'll even do that.
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all ancients civilizations did it before you ..
i've been a student of the Egyptian art history and from the few knowledge i know about them i can tell that those people had something beyond just an urge to express in an artistic manner .. they weer moved and motivated by faith and a belief.. a temple is not a mere beautiful architectural formation, it is a whole word expressed in the form of a building! it was all inspired by the surrounding nature and life that they wished to maintain and preserve for the afterlife .. that's why they did not randomly choose their stones and materials .. belief and patience were the key, even with the hardest stones. impatience is one of the results of the absence of belief which not necessarily has to be a religious one.
i was in an interview yesterday .. the guy asked me what makes you lose ur patience, i told him when i stop believing! it seems he did not quite get me.. (:
what surprised me in your idea is that there's someone in these materialistic times of ours, when people think and see only what underneath their feet, overlooking the time depth factor.. thinks this way .. even on a small scale .. i do not know much about the passion and motive beyond it though ...
maybe leaving a date would be a great idea for those who come after ..
sorry for my late response .. but i dont like to take ur replies haphazardly ..
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When you say the temples were whole words expressed as architecture, what do you mean? It sounds fascinating
I know what you mean about how so many people have lost their belief, and their patience along with it. Especially in this age of technological wizardry! People are used to everything being fresh out of a packet on a shelf a few minutes from their door and entertainment and advertising crowd round on every side. Television has killed the lives, attention spans and critical thinking of millions. I'm a sucker for it too, that's why I can't have one in my house! I'm bad enough with the internet.
I think as a species humankind has been around for at least a hundred thousand years, and during that whole time we've had a passionate and powerful belief in some form of spirituality. There have been skeptics and doubters since classical Greece but it's only in the last hundred years or so that it's become widespread. Certainly in the UK where the official religion in Christianity, very few people are active. I just looked it up and apparently 70% of the UK are Christians but I don't believe that for a second. I'm sure plenty of people will put it down on a form as their 'faith' but do they attend church more than once a year? I doubt it. There's been a huge loss of patience and respect recently, (though I'm hoping it's just a transition phase), and I do think a lot of it is because so few people believe.
Without strong and genuine faith in a religion I get the feeling a lot of people just go their own way, wandering the easiest possible path with the quickest fixes of the simplest pleasures. There are always some who still need something more - the passion doesn't go away even if the faith does and it has to be channeled somehow.
The pseudo-Christian population really gets on my nerves. To passively assume that everything's ok, we have a creator who's in control and the afterlife's taken care of and that's nice so we can all get on with living our lives as we like and only go to church for the births deaths and marriages. Real faith should inflame a person, drive them and consume them. I have met people who really believe without being dogmatic or aggressive with it, and even though I can't believe I can respect that sincerity.
Sorry. I'm starting to rant.
I guess all the above means is that I'm terrified of death. I need to make something from my heart that will outlive me and touch someone far removed in time. And the ram isn't it. I don't know what will be it I just hope I get it right at some point.
Sorry if I don't reply soon, I'm going up to Glasgow tomorrow to visit my family and make a portrait of my dad. I'll try and get online but I'm not sure when it'll be.
P.S. What does the = next to your name mean? I've seen * ~ and ^ before but not =.
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i will do the easy part now .. Happy holidays , merry Christmas to you and the family back in Glasgow and enjoy making ur father's portrait (:
the = sign refers to the official BETA testers. they are subscribers who are able to get a first hand look at and access to the new technologies and features in production by the DA technical team by choosing to become a Beta Tester. As an Official Beta Testers we're being asked to report any errors we experience while using the features and therefore help DA run as smoothly as possible, but actually reporting and joining is not a must or a condition for becoming a BETA tester.
you can check these useful FAQ's:
FAQ #532: As an Official Beta Tester, how do I provide feedback?
FAQ #531: What is an Official deviantART Beta Tester? How do I become one?
FAQ #541: If I'm a beta tester, may I choose to opt-out of the program later?
i will come back to reply the rest of ur interesting reply
hv a great time .. and please do not worry about late replies .. this thread has survived very well so far (:
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CAMERA DISTORTION!!! Honest!
It's carved and measured from my own body so unless I have a tiny head I'll put it down to the camera
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