9.8.11 Pix from 3 Days of W2W Fun!

Janelle C Moore positions the wires that will serve as a skeleton for her clay sculpture

Day One

Karen Zorn and Jackie Turner work on their armatures -- we don't call this "arma-torture" for nothing!  But in spite of that everyone seems to be smiling...

L-R Beatha Sellman (TX), Rayvin Brewer (Alberta, Canada), Karen Zorn (MI), Jackie Turner (MI), Elaine Stone, (IN)

Ummm... Jackie,you might want to think about the proportion of head as it relates to the body!  No worries, Jackie knew that the length of the skull is often very close to the same length of the shoulder (point of shoulder or top of humerus to top of withers).  

One of the main lessons in Day 1 is working from both actual measurements and working with rules of proportion (guidelines really).  W2W students go home with a knowledge base that allows them to work confidently from even obscure references, because they've learned to to see the horse from the inside out -- think of them as sculpting heroines with X-ray vision!

 

 

 

 

  A sunny smile from Elaine Stone at the end of the afternoon of Day One.

Day Two

 

Sometimes you get so excited applying the clay over a wire armature that you loose track of all those important landmarks that you started out with.  In this case some major surgery was in order to restore the original proportions and correct angles.

The highlight of the afternoon was a field trip out to visit Leslie Tengelsen's lovely Holsteiner mare, Callie. I'm not sure who looks more blissed out, Callie or Elaine.

 Day 3

Day three was time for fiddly details and pulling things together.  I did several demonstrations; a shortcut for creating nice hooves, sculpting the head, working with wax and a hot tool, several ways to add volume to your sculpture without covering up all your landmarks.  That kind of thing.  I hope some of the gals will send in pictures that I can share with you here later!

Viola!  From wire to Whinny -- Janelle did such a nice job that when the sculpture was removed from it support post he stood up on his own!  This actually is not an easy thing to accomplish in your first standing sculpture..

...but everyone with with standing horses made it happen!  Lovely proportions and sense of volume on all three -- great job Jackie, Elaine and Janelle!  The action pose horses that  Beatha, Rayvin and Karen created were wonderful too!

Here's the whole krewe: Rayvin, Beatha, Karen, Lynn, Jackie, Elaine and Janelle.  Miss you gals, we had such a fun time together!

I firmly believe that workshops should be about the experience you have while you're there, much more than any "end product" from your first experiments in a new way of working.