First we started by building the base with tubes and a plank.
Then we set a bunch of wires around the tubes.
And finally we built our little men with clay yay! Or maybe not so little, they could have been around 9 inches tall, I don't remember.
In the end it didn't matter, all of them had to be murdered so that we could reuse the clay for future projects. Sorry little guys, this clay is expensive.
And that's pretty much how my Figure Modeling class went for me. Six hours of modeling with clay while following the teacher's instructions as fast as you could so that you would get the right proportions. It was my first time doing this kind of job which I wasn't really into due to all the patience and effort it took although it helped me understand the form and anatomy better on a 3D space.
But we didn't just model in class, we would also have to model at home which could even take more time according to the level of grades you were going for. Putting in 12 hours of work would always get me something "Between a C+ or a B-" as the teacher would always say.
We started with basic figures... That cube sure took a long time to sharpen, it helps you if you let it dry though.
After that we moved to human body parts, starting with the feet. You could look at your own for reference or at a plaster cast foot we had.
Then we moved onto a torso to study Contrapposto to learn how the body shifts weights, think of Michelangelo's David. The reference I used it's on the left.
Then we made ears, noses, mouths and eyes. I only have pictures of 2 of these.
All of them helped us make our figures more complex up to the point we would have to make them resemble the model as close as possible.
So just like Figure Drawing and Analysis of Form it was all about copying what we saw on real life. We wouldn't get much of a chance to put much creativity into all of our work or would we? Well...
There was one assignment where we could use our imagination. And that was the Fantasy Head project!
Here we could do a head of any type of character we wanted, whenever it would be cartoony or realistic, an animal, person or just fanart, we could do everything! I decided to make my own creature for this exercise, a half dragon half man monster. It was really fun to do even though those horns gave me a lot of trouble, they wouldn't stop falling even with wires as reinforcement! I should have kept it simple but I always like to go further away than what I'm allowed to.
And that sums up my Figure Modeling class, I learned and did a lot there and I don't regret any of it. I'm just not much into sculpting so I will probably leave it like this.
