Polymer Clay Fan

Finding your artistic roots. Always be true to yourself as an artist.

Out of all the lessons I will be putting together I believe this is the most important lesson of all. First of all your artwork should be an expression of yourself, your interest and your beliefs. Art should be more than just something that is pretty to look at, otherwise what is the point. I think a lot of us over time try to create art that we think will sell or please others. I myself have been guilty of this and in the long run I always felt a disconnect from my art that was solely created for commercial or monetary gains. Now, there is nothing wrong with profiting from your art but if your whole motivation for the creation of your art is the all mighty dollar then I think you have missed the point. The goal here is to get rich creating art you love, not art you hate or could care less about ;-).

It takes me a long to time create my sculptures (minimum of 100 hours) and I have a very limited amount of time during the week to work on personal projects. If I am going to give up my free time creating something then I believe it should be for something that I am interested in. Otherwise, if I don’t enjoy the process I might as well go find another hobby or something else to do that I am interested in. That being said, I also believe think it is important that I put a little of my own self into each sculpture that I create. So, if I step back and evaluate myself, there are key interest that I have and believe should be added to my artwork.

1. I like artwork that is very dynamic. I enjoy looking at sculptures that appear to have captured their subject matter in mid-action. Dynamic sculptures make draw me into the life of the person or object that was sculpted. With each new piece my goal is to get you to think about the sculpture. I want to artistically force you to ask yourself how about the sculpture (what are they thinking, how did they get here, and what will they do next). Now keep in mind that not all my pieces, especially my most recent ones, show a lot of movement. Sometimes just a little head tilt or facial expression on a sculpture can give you the sense that the image was quickly captured in mid-movement (like with a photograph)

2. I love textures. For some reason bumps, ridges and grooves are just interesting to me, I don’t know why they are I just know that I like them. I think when it comes to sculpting; textures create an illusion that the artwork was difficult or required a greater amount of skill to create. In reality this isn’t always true and I have already put together a couple tutorials that show a few detailing tricks..

3. Muscles, muscles and more muscles – back when I was a little younger I use to participate in competitive bodybuilding shows and have actually won several titles. I have a vested interest in muscular physiques because building muscles is a large part of my past. When I look at a muscular physique I see a lot more than just physical beauty and strength, I also see hard work, determination, discipline and sacrifice. Not all of my artwork is about very muscular physiques but a large portion of it is. You see for me it is who I am and what I am personally interested in. I’m realistic and I know there are a lot of people who will hate my art because of the way I create my sculpted physiques but the point I’m trying to make is that I really don’t care if they hate it. You can’t please everyone and going out and creating art specifically for others, unless you’re being commissioned to do so, is very damaging to the soul. What is the point of spending hundreds of hours creating something if you feel detached from it in the end?

4. I love challenges – Challenges are very important and you should always push yourself to strive for greatness with each new piece. When I pick out a new piece to work on I always pick something that I think I am going to have a hard time with. Am I nervous when I start a new piece? Of course I am, especially when putting together tutorials during the sculpting process. There is always a chance my artwork is going to end up looking like crap and some people may feel that I wasted their time. However that being said, no matter how my new pieces turn out, I am 100 percent confident that I will be a better sculpture by the end of the process then when I began it.

Keep in mind that these are my interest and are the reasoning/justification on why my sculpture will end looking like whatever it ends up looking like. I know this doesn’t make a lot of sense now but I promise that it will be all clear to you once you see the final sculpture. I hope that the future tutorials will help you with the technical challenges that can come about from sculpting but in the end whatever you end up sculpting should be true to who you are.