We animals are frequently surprisingly similar and identifying those differences can be really difficult. Furriness or our perceptions built around our relationships can confuse the information and make it hard to see. Skinny legs supporting big bodies or building on larger scale where the weight of the clay is a huge issue causes a lot of problems.
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit jm.
This is the same technique I now use for making heads. A simple clay armature supports the weight throughout the build and gives you a central point that you can work outwards from, allowing that most important key to success: making loads of mistakes and fixing them. You get to avoid hollowing out so that you can play around with textures while you are building. And you will be using the process to reorganize the information in your head: there is no better way to do that than hands-on.
The skeleton is a stick-figure with the right proportions (so important when you are being species specific) set out clearly and unambiguously. Fur, muscle shapes changing with the pose and fore-shortening in photos can confuse you leading to sculptures that are a cross between lifeless, amateur taxidermy and stuffed toys.
The key reason making naturalistic forms is so hard is that our perception (the way we take in our knowledge) that we have built up over our lifetime of what shape the thing is, is based around our general experience of that animal. Making a sculpture of that living, moving, person requires going against what ‘feels’ right and using information we are unlikely to have bothered with before. Portraiture has a system to organise the huge quantity of subtle details. Learning this system will broaden your knowledge, and your access to more knowledge, enormously. That’s why the study of Portraiture and Figurative Sculpture is traditionally the bed-rock of making Art.
The more you practice these invaluable skills the more you will see improvement in all your artwork, your general concentration and your ability to see. Like a pianist ‘doing scales’ you will build up the small muscles, motor-skills and neural pathways involved in this challenging, rewarding activity.
It is not rocket science and you can do it.
Because clay shrinks as it dries and is floppy when very wet, a Clay Armature that will support and shrink with the form through the drying and the firing is invaluable. All other types of Armatures must be perfect in shape or they will ruin the sculpture. And they limit your option to change your mind. Most cause disruption because they have to be removed: clay will shrink as it dries and crack around a rigid armature.
Most techniques for building hollow, coiling or slabs, have a strong ‘voice’ of their own and will influence the final look of the piece. They can demand that you harden lower sections before you can build upwards and you are then unable to change them when you later realize they are wrong. This is a real disadvantage irregardless of your skill level. It is better to work solid over a clay armature especially if you are not using a scale-model and hollow out just before finishing touches. It’s not difficult. That technique is detailed here: Working solid and hollowing out.
Working solid is an excellent method. You set aside the ceramic requirement for certain thicknesses in the clay until you are sure you have the best sculpture you can make at that point. The armature holds the weight up. Some areas can be built hollow too. When you essentially have the look you want but just before finishing touches, hollow it out.
The key to all sculpture is this:
1- Block out the form: decide the dimensions (height, width, length) including the base. Your clay armature will do this.
2- Work in rotations refining the whole sculpture at each turn (by adding or subtracting in the case of clay).
Working on a Small Scale.
Starting small will allow you to get your head around the issues and get results quickly.
Ideally use a clay with lots of grog in it because it will sag less, crack less, fire better or be stronger as self-hardening clay. Here I used Scarva ES50 Crank, an outstanding sculpture clay.
All Pottery Suppliers Online will be happy to recommend clay if you tell them what you want to make. Clays are made from recipes so there are endless kinds. You want a Hand-building clay with fine-medium grog ( pre-fired grit). Throwing Clay for the wheel will resent being an animal and be hard to handle. Many ‘Self- Hardening ‘ clays are over-priced and difficult or unpleasant to use.
Working on a larger Scale.
I ran the following workshop over two days at the wonderful North Devon Ceramics Academy and Studio. Nicola Crocker and Taz Pollard have created a fantastic, fun, supportive and practical space for learning and sharing creativity in clay. I absolutely love teaching there. Nicola and Taz have a very genuine commitment to empowering other people and sharing their open and imaginative approach to the vast potential within ceramics. The Studio is spacious, bright and comfortable and the atmosphere is friendly, unpretentious and very encouraging.
This amazing group of all experience levels were a joy to work with. And they came up with some great improvements to the technique. You will also adapt it to suit your hands and ideas.
We are using the out-standing Scarva ES50 Crank clay (a stoneware clay with a lot of grog (ground up ceramic grit) in a variety of sizes from coarse to dust making it much easier to hand-build with because of the way it reacts with water (allowing for excellent joins) and it’s superb strength when leather-hard and also when dry. You can use different clays for the armature and exterior but using the same one means everything shrinks at the same rate during drying and firing.
Many thanks to Nicola Crocker for the great photos of the workshop.
The Technique:
Squirrel.
This piece is all about the energy and character of this squirrel. The ‘fluffy tail’ can be a meaningless cliche and has not been used here.
Birds
Making birds is notoriously difficult because of their insane relationship with gravity. Work slowly in stages allowing the parts to firm up and add to the support system. Remove parts of your clay-armature cautiously in small stages.
Giraffe
A wonderful form where negative shapes play a stunning role. Their grace and movement is enchanting and very tricky to capture.
Wild Boar
This animal is iconic and has held it’s place in art for Millenia. It’s bulky form and thick fur can easily be over generalised into a blob on sticks. Here the skeleton secures the integrity of the structure. This sculpture is about his power and movement.
Cats
Cats are extraordinarily flexible and their exterior hides their structure. Making pets can be very difficult because we have so much knowledge of them that can cloud the sculptural information. Use the skeleton to keep on track with proportions that our nutty perceptions may think are similar to humans!
Dogs
This student had gorgeous pictures of her adorable young dog, especially his loving face. But at this small scale she focussed on his movement and energy to portray him. She will paint his distinctive markings on in colour.
Meercats
Are you interested in learning more about Animal Sculptures? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
These little guys have tiny feet and very slender legs. You could build some grass or rocks around their lower legs to give stability. Or add a friend.
Otter
This up-right stance gives similar problems to the meercats but the way otters stand gives plenty of attachment to the base.
The Horse
Like many big herbivores, horses have surprises in their skeletons that are key to their shape. A ridge of spurs along the spine limits over-flexing but also keeps predator teeth away from the precious spinal column. It defines their characteristic silhouette. The skull seems bizarre but get that blocked in well and the head will look great, even in a small scale.
Armadillo.
These guys go well out of their way not to look like animals all! They have extraordinary skeletons, well worth studying. But it has to be said that apart from getting proportions right, the hard shell-like outer skin means you see no clues of the bones showing on the armadillo’s surface. Their shell is a very subtle, beautiful shape with exquisite patterns.
Your central, weight-bearing support does not need to be flat/straight: Both of these abstracts below were built outwards from a stiffened, curvy, up-right central shape of various thickness set on a metal rod. You can see parts of the original central support where it became part of the final form, much like the sculpture of the Giraffe above.
Quality Joints:
Genuine joins are formed when the chains of platelet-shaped particles from each section inter-lock. Picture a magnified image of hair.
Score marks do not give the surface ‘tooth’; they allow water into the clay-body. On vertical surfaces they hold the water in place to give it time to sink in and swell the clay so that the platelets are able to link with other platelets.
Slip is not ‘glue’, it is clay particles spread out in water and has little strength, especially when it has dried . It is ideal for holding a lot of water in place to give it time to be absorbed to soften the area of leather-hard clay.
Once both edges are softened put the pieces back together and move them back and forth until you feel the edges lock together.
Manipulate the softened clay at the join to encourage further integration of those particle-chains and to disturb the straight line of the join; cracks love to zing along a nice straight slip-weakened join during the firing when the pull of shrinking stresses the sculpture.
Thicknesses: cracking/breaking.
How thick the clay can be to fire well depends on the amount of grog (the gritty bits of pre-fired clay ground to specific sized grit/dust that gives improved structure and resilience to your clay), the denseness of your modelling style, drying time and the speed of your firing.
Air bubbles trapped in the clay will expand with the heat. Grog and/or a loose surface will allow the air to seep through the clay. The same is true with water but steam expands fast. If your piece breaks into big bits during the fire it was trapped air and you will be able to see where the bubbles were in the shards. If it blows up into a trillion smithereens it wasn’t properly dry!
Drying:
I dry thick sculptures slowly under plastic which I turn inside out ( to avoid condensation pooling) daily for 4 weeks minimum and then 1-2 weeks in a plastic tent with a dehumidifier. A card-board box makes a great, slow, draft-free drying chamber. A long dry allows the water to level out, as water loves to do, and that will enhance the structure of the clay within it’s new sculpture shape. You will get less cracks or distorting in the fire.
I fire very slowly with an 18 degree C rise until 600 degrees C. then onto full power up to the desired temperature.
Generally 3cm is a fair maximum thickness for a well grogged clay.
There is good essential advice about handling clay on the post about Coil Building.
How To Make a Head is essentially the same method and you will find it helpful. It talks about human heads but of course is relevant to all heads apart from the handy option of being able to measure with callipers from your own.
Climbing the steps to the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan as a child, I was greeted by Patience and Fortitude, the two male lions carved from porous Tennessee pink marble that have been flanking the main entrance since . Friendly and regal, they warmly welcome readers and researchers into the building, and it’s always fun to see them accoutered with seasonal garb like a Christmas wreath or a graduation cap, or reading an oversized book. They were the first example I can recall of animals depicted in art (short of all those wonderful animations in cartoons and childhood books). Since then, I’ve kept any eye out for animals that show up in marble or mosaics, in photographs and on canvases. Some artists capture them so magnificently that you almost expect the subject to chirp or roar or neigh. These are my favorites.
In Lucerne, one of Switzerland’s most beautiful cities, I found what Mark Twain called “the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.” Unlike the cheerful, young, healthy duo Patience and Fortitude, the lion at the Lion Monument will fracture your heart a bit—truly deserving of Twain’s hyperbole. Viewed from across a pond in a quiet, sheltered place, a dying lion commemorates the death of more than 600 Swiss Guard members killed in Paris in the line of duty. Established in , the Swiss Guard, one of the oldest military units in continuous operation (you can still see them in their striped carnival-color uniforms around St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City), found themselves caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution. On August 10, , disaffected revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace where King Louis XVI and the Royal Family were staying. Running low on ammunition and vastly outnumbered, the Swiss Guards were doomed. While heroically trying to defend the king, more than 600 were killed that day, either during the fighting or massacred after they surrendered, with more than 100 dying later on from their wounds. One of the Guards was lucky: Second Lieutenant Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen wasn’t even there that day; he was on leave in his hometown of Lucerne. Once the revolution ended and the political situation in Switzerland calmed down, von Altishofen, still distraught over the loss of his comrades-in-arms, began collecting donations in to create a worthy monument. The Lion Monument was inaugurated in on private property that was purchased by the city decades later, opening it to public viewing. At 20’ high and 33’ long, the monument features a dying lion carved in high relief into a cliff face in a former sandstone quarry. The prone lion, with his mane defluffed, lies on his side, a broken spear impaled below his shoulder. His closed eyes and furrowed brow convey both the physical pain he is experiencing and the emotional pain of not being able to successfully defend his charge—a crushing disappointment for any proud Guard. His mouth is ajar, emitting his final breaths; his right paw rests on a shield with the fleur-de-lis of the French monarchy while another shield with the Swiss coat-of-arms leans beside him. Dedicated, in Latin, “to the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss” who died in France, designed by a Dane, and sculpted by a German, the monument’s pan-European origins extend to a much broader appeal: Nearly 1.5 million visitors from around the globe stop by to view the saddest piece of rock in the world every year.
Atop Capitoline Hill in Rome, I entered the Capitoline Museums, a single museum (one of the world’s oldest, dating back to ) now housed in three interlinked former palaces, the oldest of which was built in the 13th century. Within its galleries I found the utterly remarkable marble sculpture group Lion Attacking a Horse. It’s a pretty fierce depiction, and shockingly lifelike, and it harbors a long history, beginning with its creation in Greece in approximately 325–300 BC. As the Roman Empire expanded, this masterful work of art was toted back to Rome as victory booty. At some point, it got dismembered, with only the horse’s torso and the top half of the lion remaining. Even so, it retained a prominent place outdoors in the piazza conceived by Michelangelo fronting the three palaces. Restored in , with all body parts returned, you can clearly see where two of the horse’s legs were attached. At about 4.5’ high, almost 5’ wide, and nearly 8’ long, this sculpture is a study in frightful realism. A fallen stallion is captured in its terror, mouth gasping and eyes wide open, as a lion tears into its flank with its teeth and front paws. The extraordinary detail reveals pulls in the horse’s flesh where the lion is ripping into it. One might think this is just a representation of what happens out in the wild kingdom, but, alas, no: That horse is domesticated, revealed by its horseshoes.
Just around the bend from the Pantheon, I entered the Piazza della Minerva to see the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva in my quest to find the five most beautiful churches in Rome. But something in the middle of the piazza attracted my attention first: the playful Elephant and Obelisk. It seemed wonderfully out of place: elephants and obelisks in Italy? Well, maybe not so incongruous, after all. Thirteen obelisks can be found around the city, including at the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, one of Rome’s top five fountains. And elephants were used by the ancient Romans (and by their rival Hannibal, who famously crossed the Alps atop one) during the Punic Wars. So there’s some precedent here. But how did this one come to be? The smallest obelisk in Rome, at just under 18’ and created sometime in the 500s BC, arrived in the city via the emperor Diocletian (284–305), who brought it from Egypt. Eventually lost for hundreds of years, it was rediscovered in the 17th century, and Pope Alexander VII commissioned its erection in a public space, a stone’s throw from where it was found and where it stands today. Gian Lorenzo Bernini won the commission and designed the elephant base that I was admiring (although one of his assistants probably did the actual sculpting). He chose the elephant because it symbolizes wisdom, but Bernini may have tapped it for its practicality: An elephant is large enough to support the column’s weight; an obelisk atop a sheep or a mouse would have made even less sense. The elephant doesn’t seem particularly pleased by its burden, which makes this sculpture unintentionally amusing. Standing on top of a high, narrow pedestal, the marble elephant appears steady, except for its head swinging off in one direction. With its eyes caught in a dramatic eyeroll upward, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me with this,” the elephant’s long trunk flies behind its head and upward, trying, perhaps, to swat away the weight from its back and wishing it had only the tasseled caparison instead. Since its unveiling in , the statue has been the source of a wonderful, unsubstantiated, urban legend. A Dominican priest involved with the creation of the monument (he had lost the commission himself) and Bernini butted heads: The priest didn’t like the elephant idea (he wanted four dogs, each supporting a corner of the obelisk); he also didn’t think Bernini’s elephant could support the weight of the column, and the artist was obliged to amend his design, but not without a crafty solution that probably irked the dissentious cleric: Although you can still see that forced concession as a solid block under the elephant’s belly, Bernini used the saddlecloth to cover most of it, seemingly getting his own way and creating something even more beautiful in process. So far, all true. The rumor stems from the elephant’s position: Its backside faces what had been the windows of the priest’s office in the monastery on the piazza, so he had to look at the animal’s bottom every day instead of a more appealing view. To add insult to injury, the elephant’s tail is raised and the posterior muscles look a little tense, as if it’s about to answer a nature call—an appropriate and shockingly rude salute to the man who had aggravated Bernini a little too often. True or not, the tale certainly adds flair to this engaging sculpture, as does its nickname: Pulcino della Minerva (“Minerva’s Chick”), which comes down from a mispronunciation of its earlier nickname, Porcino della Minerva (“Minerva’s Pig”), introduced by Romans who didn’t believe the whole story about Bernini being inspired by wise elephants and felt that he had, in fact, sculpted a pig.
In spring , a young man went hiking on Helvellyn, a mountain in the English Lake District, with his trusted companion, a reddish-brown terrier named Foxie. He met his end the same day in an unknown manner, but most likely from a tragic fall. No one is sure how long he lived after the fall, but he eventually died where he laid, and his body was found three months later. But he wasn’t alone: Foxie, now fairly emaciated, had stayed by her master’s side the entire time, chasing away ravens and foxes that might have made a snack, or a full meal, of her master. One year later, Sir Walter Scott immortalized the incident, and Foxie’s astounding fealty, in his elegy “Helvellyn,” in which another climber arrives at the spot where his predecessor perished:
…One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I marked the sad spot where the wandered had died.
Dark green was that spot mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay.
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay;
Not yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favorite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long nights didst thou number
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And, O, was it meet that — no requiem read o’er him,
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before him —
Unhonored the Pilgrim from life should depart?
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn…
In , the English painter Sir Edwin Henry Landseer gave visual life to Scott’s poem with his own interpretation. The result is Attachment, an oil painting that now hangs in Missouri’s St. Louis Art Museum. On the nearly 40” x 33” canvas, Landseer created the scene of the fallen hiker, lying on his back, at the bottom of the composition. Rocks and mountain soar up above him, emphasizing the height from which he probably fell. His lower body is hidden by (perhaps under?) the nearby rocks. Some dark shadows add drama to the scene, its exact time impossible to determine. Had he just fallen? The grayish hue of his hand suggests no; he may have been there for a while, and this may be his quietus. On her hind legs beside him, his very own furry Achates leans forward, looking down at her master, with a paw upon his chest, as if trying to rouse him. It’s a positively heartbreaking scene that flawlessly capture’s Foxie’s loyalty and the special bond between man and his best friend.
One of the most beautiful churches in the world, Siena Cathedral goes back to , when the building was mostly completed with the addition of its dome (although lots of alterations came later). Once you get past the grandeur of the façade, with its mosaics, statues, and white and greenish-black marble stripes, and step inside, you’ll need a moment to regain your breath. The lavish interior is guaranteed to overwhelm you, and you’re going to need a few hours to take it all in. Start with the floor. Inlaid marble mosaic covers the entire floor of the cathedral, one of the most ornate of its kind in all of Italy. One of the cathedral’s later additions, the floor was added during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, employing about 40 artists during that time to create 56 panels, most of which are still in their original state. The first one I noticed, however, is not: What was left of the original (from ) is now housed in a museum; the current version is from . That hardly matters, though—it’s a remarkable piece of art. In a central medallion of The She-Wolf of Siena, the mosaic, done in white, black, and a rusty orange, portrays the mythological founding of the city: a somewhat ribby she-wolf nursing the twins Senius and Aschius. If that sounds familiar, you’re right: Rome has the same lupine legend regarding its own founding, by twins Remus and Romulus. But this isn’t a copycat situation: The Sienese twins are the sons of Remus, who embarked on a hegira from Rome to escape their nasty uncle. Here, one of them is suckling his accommodating mother; the other is about to. Surrounding this central circle, eight additional roundels depict the animal symbols of Siena’s allied cities in central Italy, including a hare for Pisa, a spotted panther for Lucca, a horse for Arezzo, a stork for Perugia, a unicorn for Viterbo, and an elephant for Rome (arguably a forerunner for Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk). In the corners, four additional cities and their zoological symbols appear in circles. This menagerie is too beautiful to step on; you’ll find yourself subconsciously walking around it instead. It also will spur your curiosity to find out more about those symbols. How did Florence end up with a lion? The free Republic of Florence chose it as its symbol in the 12th century because the lion can shred the eagle, the symbol of imperial power that Florence had liberated itself from. And what about Orvieto’s goose? Even more curious: A flock of boisterous, clamoring geese woke a sleeping soldier in 390 BC, alerting him to the Gauls who were just about ready to launch a surprise attack and enabling him to rouse his comrades and successfully repel the invaders—not in Orvieto, but in Rome, about 75 miles away.
Have you seen these? Have I inspired you to go visit them? Let me know!
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Bronze Fish Sculpture.