Work has been keeping me so busy I haven't had much time for my personal work but here's a sample of my recent work on this piece, come back soon to see some new stuff.

I've been getting a little more time and a free schedule to draw lately, here are some snapshots from my sketchbook after a morning modeling session.

I'm starting a new piece, almost 1:1 scale emperor tamarin. It's a beautiful inquisitive animal, and remarkably cure. I was lucky enough to study them on a recent zoo visit, I'll show some progress pics as I go on this one.

I got to spend about 10 hours with Jerry on this bust, I used Roma #1 because it's about 12 inches tall. I have a little brushwork left to soften the texture, improve the wrinkles and homogenize the hair.

I took Carlos's workshop a few months ago and had a great time. We had a choice of 3 designs that were done by Carlos in advance, so when we arrived our armatures were already constructed and we were ready to sculpt. The 3 designs were used as a 3D puzzle we had to unravel and determine how to construct from only one view based on our knowledge of anatomy. It was a very difficult excercise with lots of good artists to work around, ranging from ILM, Pixar, Dreamworks, EA and Zynga and more.
I chose a quadruped with a split front leg, so it has 5 contact points with the base. The piece stand about 20 inches tall. We were going to have a considerable amount of time to work on details so we used Chavant nsp for extra detailing later in the week.

Carlos Would walk around the workshop aiding everyone in how to read the design and with the craft of sculpting the material to match his expectations of texture and form. Understanding his concept was key, it was like a working for him for a week. These is how far I was able to push the piece during the week, occasionally Carlos would come by with a knife and chop off whatever he didn't agree with, so some bits were left at varying levels of finish.







As you can see the piece was designed without any face, I may return to the piece later and finish it up if I have some time for it. The workshop itself was great and everyone in the class with me made it even more enjoyable.

This is a small scale piece I started a few weeks ago, I have 4 more sessions scheduled with the model. I'm trying to keep this a loose piece and am using roma #2 clay for that reason.

Here is my piece after the level 3 course, it was a great class, even better instruction and course material covered than the previous week's. I've learned a considerable about of techniques to add to my work.

We worked really hard on our pieces for day 4 of our class, here's some proof.

Today was a great day, we focused even more in depth on the hands and feet. We went all the way down the planes of the flexor and extensor digitorum into the fingers and toes and giving then expressive and dynamic qualities.



I was very flattered when asked by other classmates about Andrew helping me out with my hands, and they were all surprised I did them myself because they all like them so much. This may also mean that the rest of what I'm doing isn't working as well :(
Studying Burne Hogarth's book about dynamic hands back in high school surely helped me out with this.


A bust made by Jonathan Neill of the the Governator was brought in today for the class to check out, it was a very well done piece, hopefully he will be able to teach a class in SF sometime soon, his portrait work is phenomenal.



Finally here is my recorded progress for the day.

Today was a great day for progress, out goal was to nail a few overlooked portions of a piece due to difficulty. We focused on the face, hands, feet and knees. Joint transitions are some of the hardest parts of the body to have look accurate, yet are one of the major telling points of whether or not a sculpture is correct.

Andrew did a quick demo for relating animal to human anatomy, we worked with a few live dogs and tracked bone and musle configuration in relation to a human's anatomy.



Our co-instructor, Damon Bard, brought in a maquette he made at Dreamworks for Kung Fu Panda. It was a really well made piece that showed his skills of understanding anatomy, form, and squash and stretch.



This is a detail show of how we worked through giving the 1/3 scale hand some detail.


Here is the progress I made for the day, after only 2 days I'm very happy with the pose and likeness to the model. I still have some correct planes and anatomy to fix before I can add any more detail, but at this rate I'll have the confidence I need in Carlos Huante's class next week.