Sculptures

Clay Bark

This is a sculpture of a Tree Man. It is made using chavant clay. I created it as part of my Prosthetics Course at Aylesbury College. I intended it to be molded in plaster to create a latex mask. I settled on another sculpture in the end, but this one was too good to pull apart. This work is inspired by the Ents in JRR Tolkien’s Arda Mythos. It could fit into any area of the sci fi fantasy genre. I looked at photos of tree bark to try and created the look of the skin. I also consider giving the creature more expressive eyes; but i think the blank eyes are eerier. 

Jack's Face

This is another work inspired by Victorian bogeyman Spring Heeled Jack. It is also inspired by Gothic fiction, dark fairy tales and mystery novels. It is sculpted using chavant clay on top of a plaster lifecast of my own face. i wanted to create something that looked organic and living, but also had the grotesque, exaggerated features of a clown or horror puppet. 

Spring Heeled Jack originally appeared as a character in a ‘Penny Dreadful’ – a kind of Victorian comic book.

Man

This is a simple sculpture of a human male. It is made using a wire armature, tin foil bulking, a foamboard base and sculpted in chavant clay

Germanic Warrior

This sculpture is made using the same methods as ‘Man’ and ‘Claws’. I imagined this character as a part of a battle scene. He is about to quickly lower his spear to signal a charge. The figure is inspired by Norse and Germanic mythology.

Claws

This sculpture is made using the same methods and materials I used to create the Man. This one depicts a monster inspired by the Anglo Saxon poem, Beowulf. In the poem, the hero Beowulf goes on a journey to defeat the monster Grendel. It is also influenced by werewolves in Irish folklore. that was the main intention; to create some that had human and animal characteristics. 

The sculpting process

For the Germanic warrior, I made the base out of foam board and the skeleton out of aluminum wire. I then put aluminum foil over the top. I applied chavant nsp clay for the flesh.

Vertical mouth

The base of this sculpture is made from foam board. The body is made form air drying clay. The design is based on the ‘Gugs’ from H P Lovecrafts 1943 novella, ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’. I wanted to create something more bizarre than my previous work, so I added the vertical mouth and strange eye arrangement. 

This sculpture took several days. Be patient for best results. Whenever I stopped working, I gave it a sprinkling of water and covered it with a plastic bag to make sure the clay did not harden. 

 

air drying clay

Air drying clay is better than oil based clay for large sculptures. Oil based clay is much harder to shape especially in large quantities 

Here I am trying to get the basic shapes of the body right. It is important to get the forms right before attempting to do details. I had intended to do just a simple human male sculpture. But at this point I decided I wanted something more to do with war or fighting, and something rooted in myth

Kneadatite more commonly known as ‘green stuff’ is a modelling putty normally used for creating wargames miniatures. Mixing the blue and yellow parts together until the mixture goes green. Once it does you will have 20 – 30 minutes before it hardens. 

I also made this sculpture out of chavant. This clay is good for maquettes or small sculptures like this one. It holds detail well and does not dry.