tributesinwood

Some Fun with Clay

This is a bit new for me.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was having some difficulty in carving the body of the hockey player figure that I had in mind.  If you recall, this tough guy just wrapped up a bit of an on-ice altercation and now finds himself in the penalty box for two minutes…and enjoying every second of it.

The head and helmet carving went well, but I just couldn’t get the arms-over-the-boards stance to look right to me…and, with carving, a mistake is a bit unforgiving once the wood has been cut away!  Anyways, with 10 lbs of clay and a few clay-working tools now in my possession ( thanks, Peggy ), I started the shaping of the body this morning with the intent of using the finished clay figure as a 3-dimensional model for the carving.

First step was to take my front and side view drawings that I had made and transfer them to the block of clay.  I’m not entirely sure if this is the right way to work clay, but it was similar to blocking wood out on a bandsaw…so I went with it.  I actually did the initial shaping against the drawing lines with a piece of wire and sort of “sawed” through the clay.  Then I used one of the tools ( which is basically a heavy loop of wire on the end of a stick ) to start removing some of the squareness of the clay cube.

At about this point, I dropped the whole darn thing on the cement floor and completely flattened out one side!  Ha!  A bit more shaping got things looking normal again.  Then, I started digging in with the tool to produce the arms, gloves and a hole to accept the head and helmet that I had already carved.

I’ve just started to add some of the detail, but really am just still getting the right shape down.  This weekend, I’ll add wrinkles and what-not and then let it dry into a model for my carving.  Let me tell you, this is a lot of fun.