Randotron

Level 3 day 1

Today was the start of the level 3 course! It's more 1 on 1 instructor, a more advanced pose, less hand holding and allows more experimentation with blending Andrew's work flow and the students. So far it's an awesome class, with an amazing model and pose.

Half of the students are making an animal, which will be completing with the aid of a creature and animal expert and reference. The other half of the students (including me) will be working on the human figure in a dynamic pose. It's a really solid class and very excellent .

This is a quick sculpture Andrew did to demonstrate how tension can be expressed in the muscles of a model and what a dynamic pose can really do. It's an awesome piece and is the same model we'll be working with, a very short but powerful cirque du soleil performer.

This is my piece the and progress I made by the end of the day. It was pretty close to hitting my goals, incorporating Andrew's methods with the ones I've been practicing for a long time, starting back with Robert Copskey's back at MICA.

It's a pretty good start and has some good energy to the pose, but needs some proportion adjustments to the masses. The model is currently holding ropes in his fists and is 50% into his final pose. Later in the week he'll hang form the ceiling for very short periods of time and then we'll really push understanding anatomy in a dynamic pose.

Level 2 day 5

These images show the work I've done for the week, much of the piece was left intentionally rough and blocked out to leave a map of Andrew's sculpting style. By leaving in the blocking lines, it shows his methods for breaking down the figure and measuring spots to accurately construct the anatomy for a figure.

I think the class was a great success and already see how these tips can improve my work and ways I can combine them with the approach I'm used to in my work flow.

I'm 1/3 of the way done with my workshops, I felt like Andrew's knowledge was so expansive there was far more than could be absorbed in one week, I feel very grateful I have more time to work with him and can't wait for more!

My goals for next week are to nail down some tricky parts of blocking out the flexors and extensors and expressing the subtleties of the back correctly. For the piece as a whole I hope to be able to better merge Andrew's techniques of working with the figure and my own. If I can do this it will be a combination of his and my own work flow and perhaps with the new knowledge and my old skills I can push my skills to a new level. I was trained to work mainly from observation, and with Andrew the week was spent learning the body and how to recreate it from knowledge. Observational and the new ways to break down anatomy should help create the results I've been working for.

Level 2 day 4

Here is my work for the day, class must have run for about 16 hours today and I'm just wiped out, I'll update you guys more on how the piece got to this point, but for now here are just the images for today's work.

Some discipline that’s can be difficult to understand and harder to follow this week is knowing our goal as a workshop isn’t to make a piece of art, it’s to sculpt and learn the methods to create one while being accurate. My normal speed and process would have been able to get me much further along than I am after so much work. We’re only to work on the sections of the body we cover in lectures and nothing else during sculpting time. This makes the creation process somewhat a disjointed workflow and also only gives us one shot at each location of the body.

As Andrew has repeatedly stated, there is no point for us to come and create what we always do in our normal work because it will be simply that; something at our current skill level. What I’m making certainly isn’t beautiful, but it’s accuracy to real anatomy is much closer than anything I’ve done before and I will only grow from this point.

Level 2 day 3

Day 3 of our workshop has come to a close. It was a great day but even with 12 hours of class I didn't get enough time to get my piece as far as I wanted or try all of the excellent methods of Andrew's.

As promised, here is today's progress.

Level 2 day 2

Today was the end of day 2 for level 2! I'm still going strong and having a blast. The material is just right for me, some is review and some is new which is just what I was looking for to start out with my 3 weeks of instruction. The following pic is Andrew showing us his method for nailing the skull proportions.

The little 1/3 scale skull was made by instructor Eric Wilson. It's an awesome reference piece and something I plan on keeping with my just to study and keep in my hands when I have a few free moments in my day.

These pics show the day's work, we mapped out the skull and ocular cavities. We worked down into the neck, formed some of the shoulders and then back into the scapula. Hopefully we can start picking up the pace tomorrow, I'm excited to see how far I can get it my Friday.

Level 2 day 1

I just finished the first day of Anatomy Tools level 2 course! Andrew Cawrse is the instructor and did an excellent job introducing us to his measuring techniques and methods for approaching a new sculptures.

This is the inside of the classroom, just to give you an idea of how large the facility is. It has a nice lighting layout with enough control to light all the pieces, there are about 5 students in the class, Andrew instructing and 3 assistants sculpting with us to see the process they are coaching us with.

Here is the piece that originally led me to this studio to study, it's Andrew's reference Ecorché sculpt. Along with paying for the class I was finally able to afford a cast of this piece for reference use in my own studio.

This is Walter, any sculpting class worth taking always has a resident skeleton.

This poster shows the end goal for this week's piece. The model is a cirque du soleil trapeze artist. As you can imagine he is in incredible shape and a rare treat to study from. The final result should look pretty close to the CG example already made by Andrew.

These 3 pieces illustrate Andrew's method of simple primitives, refining them to planes and then adding in anatomical details.

Lecture time with Andrew,we're discussing primitives and breaking down the masses for generic shapes when starting a piece.

This is what I managed to finish after the first day, with all the lecture time we only had 2 hours to dive into the clay, but I had a decent start. Can't wait to get further along with this guy!