Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Lessons in sculpting


Did you know that you could get a lesson in sculpting on the streets of New York?
That is exactly what happened last week in New York. After dinner, I was strolling around Times Square and what do I see: a guy sculpting people's likeness out of clay right on the street. As I was always interested in sculpting, I stood by and started watching him. As you see in the pics above, he went from pic #1 to pic #2 in less than 15 mins! He was quick and accurate.
His technique was what interested me. He started off with a lump of clay, and slammed it into a mold (the type of clay he used was very important). What came out of the mold was the shape of a generic face, very close to what you see in pic #1. Onto this, he started adding/removing clay to add features. All he used was a few wooden tools to supplement his fingers. I took a series of pics of him working on a model. That gave me a very good record of the process he followed. I even tried to buy one of his molds, but he wouldn't part with it (he had spares). I have tried looking for such a mold ever since in vain.
All in all, it was an interesting demonstration of his clay modeling technique, and I learnt a great deal in less than a half hour! As soon as I came back home, I went and bought some of the same clay he was using, and started experimenting on my own. Will post some of the results once they are worthy of sharing.