Little Walter Tell gets his final coat
The finishing process of each sculpture is akin to creating an entire piece in and of itself. Like a painting on top of a sculpture. Once the piece has been sculpted, hollowed out and fired, a lot of work has already gone into it. The final finishing step is therefore a bit intimidating. What if I mess it up and waste all that time? What if it is just OK and I’ve put so much time into an OK piece? What if…!?
Up until Walter, I haven’t been all that pleased with the finish on my pieces (well, there have only been 2 others so what am I complaining about?!). With Walter, I spent a lot of time thinking, visualizing and researching how I would finish him while he was drying and being fired. I only started my next sculpture when I’d done this creative and brain work. So when it came to finishing him, it went kind of… smooth. So far I’ve chosen to paint the pieces rather than put glazes on and have them fired again. I’m not patient or practiced enough to do this quite yet.
I an very happy with how Little Walter Tell came out and I learned a few tricks which I will use on The Gentle Curves of Grief.
What’s next?
My initial plan was to start on a female expressive sculpture to match and compliment The Gentle Curves of Grief. However, my darling husband has been not so subtly inviting me to sculpt him. And so, when he rounded the corner out of the bedroom on Sunday morning with his hair sticking straight up, a lovely layer of stubble covering his chin and some almost-49-year-old sleepy bags under his eyes, I thought to myself – what a great sculpting subject! There you go, plans change, ideas take shape and off we go into another sculpture. It is not my intention with this one to make it a perfect likeness of Andrew, rather to follow my desire for expression. We’ll see how he feels about that!
Sculpting is very exciting.