I have been behind on documenting my sculpting progress. I've completed three pieces since the Freddy sculpt, and am presently working on another. While I have been posting on Instagram and putting a little bit of effort in getting out there, I want to ensure I'm documenting my progress here. One day I may get sick of the sinkhole of Instagram and delete it. I don't want to lose the record of my progress.
The sculpt I did after Freddy, Travis Bickell: Taxi Driver, displays considerable forward progress in my skill. I've learned much since wrestling through the Krueger piece. I also find many aspects of the process to be almost instinctual. What I mean is, as I've watched lessons on the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, or Reels on Instagram, I can see I'm naturally doing many of the approaches and techniques being suggested. They were already happening beneath my fingertips.
Along with growth in my skill, my tools and materials have grown. One step I've tried to take is producing better images. I've only an Iphone at this point, and it often flattens and distorts the images, but I built a make-shift lightbox and that has stepped up the quality. I will have to do a tool update soon. But for now, let me get to the pieces I've made.
Travis Bickell: Taxi Driver
This was a fun project, based on a course by Jordu Schell on the Stan Winston school. The course was a quick walk-through of approaches to doing something of this type, and overall an introductory course to sculpting a human figure. I pulled together dozens of images from Taxi Driver, capturing Robert DeNiro from as many angles as I could find. The pose was inspired by the pose of DeNiro in his apartment, when he is fantasizing with his newly purchased arsenal.
As I said, this was a fun and challenging project. The head presented many challenges, and I believe I tore it off and redid it around five or six times. In the end, it caputured the "spirit" of DeNiro's features, but wasn't completely on the mark. I'm satisfied though, and know that as my skill develops, bringing across a likeness will become easier.
Gas Mask Chainsaw
I don't know what to call this thing. It started out as something, conceptually, very different. I thought I was going to be doing a piece which commented on suburbia, the strangeness of being human in this America, a time of homoginzation, extermination, planetary destruction. All high art ideas, concepts, and pretty much cliche' at this point. But, I liked the working title of it: Monoculture. It seemed to say so much in that one word. It was to be an over-weight, elderly man, wearing a gas mask, shirtless, and spraying a weed. He was to be holding one of those big canisters of herbicide in one hand, and spraying the weed with one of those long spray wands that attach by hose to the herbicide tank. But when I tried to do this I became bored. To keep it interesting for me I just let myself explore whatever came to mind. And out popped this thing. I think he's pretty cool and appears like something which could inhabit the Mad Max universe.
Skull Study
I had this glob of Monster Clay plopped on a piece of rod for sometime, the initial idea to sculpt a likeness. When I finally got around to it I sculpted a skull study instead. I found a cool 3d rendering of a skull online for reference. What made this rendering cool was you could move it about 360 degrees, top, bottom, etc. Perfect for this sculpt. I'm happy with this piece. It's highly detailed, and the jaw even pops off. I'm thinking I may come back to this and transform it into some kind of Gieger-esque snake thing.
Wrap Up
It's good to finally get these documented and up on the site. I can really see the development happening. I'm presently chipping away at a new piece. A whole new approach, a new clay, new challenges. I hope to be able to share it sometime soon.
Author: Jason Jacobs
Jason Jacobs is an artist, project manager, and frontend web designer living and working in Boise, Idaho. Beyond work he spends his time with family, as well as reading, writing articles for Uhmm, and working on his art. All words and opinions, etc., are his and do not reflect the positions or beliefs of anyone other than himself.