Polymer Clay Fan

One of the risk of letting a project sit on a shelf for too long is that as your skills develop it potentially is less likely that you will complete the project.  I’m sure there are quite a few of you out there that completely disagree with me but in my office I have a large number of unfinished sculptures that will never be completed. In all honesty most of the art that I have created is unfinished which brings up another point. Sometimes it’s really a good idea to see yourself to the end of a piece before jumping around to something else (one of my personal goals I’m trying to work on).

A couple years back (or more) I wanted to create a sculpture of what I called a soul collector.  Basically a Grim Reaper type of creature that has a variety of lost souls swimming under his skin.  I’m attracted to the concept of this project for the most part because of the complexity involved in being able to pull off the sculpt.  Sculpting the individual souls under the skin is one thing but making the entire project work to where it doesn’t look like a convoluted mess  is a different beast to conquer.  I’ve been working on and off with this project for over two years now (more off than on) and now that I’m ready to finish it I’ve come to realization that I do not like the direction that I have taken with my original sculpture. To start the sculpture has some symmetry issues and I’m not all that in love with the overall design.  I can fix all the problems but basically I’ve reached a point where starting over will probably cost me less time than trying to fix this sculpture.  It’s not that the sculpture is bad and I have received positive feedback on it but I’ve basically reached a point where my skills and design taste have changed enough where starting over is the best option.

So, to avoid getting too wordy here I’ll show of a collection of picks of my original concept along with the project I’m current working on.  Keep in mind that the latest sculpt is still in the early stages so it has a long ways to go until the details are caught up with the original piece. The first three pictures are my original design and the last two represent the newer sculpt.

You can see more on this sculpture at www.goreartistry.com

For the most part I live a very healthy lifestyle, I’m in the gym six to seven days a week, eat very clean (except for Saturdays) and rarely drink.  I’m not oblivious to the fact that most people will probably find me to be a pretty boring person but hey I am what I am.  However, that being said one of the vices in my life is that I like to smoke cigars.  I don’t get to smoke them often, at best only a couple times a week, but they are something I’ve come to really enjoy over the years.

I enjoy collecting different cigar accessories, for example lighters and cutters, however one of the key accessories that was missing from my collection was a cigar ashtray.  There are quite a few cigar ashtrays out there that have a good design but I have yet to find one that really grabs my attention.  One of the key advantages of being an artist is that if I’m unable to find what I’m looking for in the commercial market I can always create it myself.  I wanted an ashtray consisting of skulls and skulls so it was off to the workshop to begin my project. Read the rest of this entry »