Monday, 26-Sep-11 22:48:00 CEST

Slender Sculpture

This is a sculpture based on a photo I found on the Internet. You cannot really ask a model to rest on her arms like this for a couple of hours so I decided to use a photo instead. As a matter of fact it could have become a painting but the pose of the model gave me the specific idea to make a ceramic sculpture. This was 20th of September 2011. I think her name is Aigyl or Aygil.

This sculpture is massive so it needs to be really dry before it can go to the kiln. If there is the slightest rest of moisture she will explode and destroy everything around her. It would be really sad if this sculpture explodes. At the moment when I write this I have no idea how this will end.

Anyway, she is still a bit wet so to be on the safe side I decided to make photos of her before she goes into the kiln. If you click the image you will load a 5 Mb GIF animation where you can see her turn around on a turn plate. This is a simple stop motion gif animation. A turn plate is a tool I use when I create a sculpture; I can turn around the sculpture and work on it from various sides very easy. Actually my turn plate is CRT monitor stand that you could buy before the flat screens came around.

Now I also use my turn plate to make the photos for the stop motion animation. I tried to make the photos without a turn plate but that was less exact. I could not get her spin around one point so easy without the turn plate. On the top of the turn plate I placed a paper with marks for how much to turn the plate in-between each photo. When I had all photos I made an animation with the cheap but good graphic program Gimp.

During transport the figure was broken. One hand broke off! I mixed a bit of clay with water and vinegar and glued the hand to the model.

On 17th of October she came out of the kiln and she had made it! She is now a hardened figure.