All that said and done, here are the final images from a few different views and a turntable of the model.

[VIEW TURNTABLE]

[VIEW IMAGES]

This whole exercise was about study and learning. So what did I learn (having some familiarity with figure sculpture already)? The exercise reinforced things that I know, forgot, or was once told. Regardless of experience, every exercise or study seems to provide some new insight. The most important points for me were:

• Examine the negative spaces for gesture

• Don’t let any one body part lag behind in refinement. Keep the entire model moving forward together, often I let the “hard parts” lag behind for fear of addressing them.

Anatomy

A few of the many fine points that I learned studying this sculpture:

1. The lateral condyle of the femur DOES show sometimes, and is very evident in this sculpture. (The entire knee shows a lot of construction).

2. Keeping proportions correct when moving the shoulder forward/backward is difficult.

3. Here the right shoulder is projected forward, partially sliding the scapula around the side of the rib cage. This stretches the trapezius, rhomboids, and lats.

4. The left shoulder is retracted, bunching those muscles up, but also narrowing the width of the shoulder as the clavicle rotates backwards in an arc.

5. The external obliques can appear quite square when viewed from the side on some people, like in our reference.

6. Feet and hands, as always are difficult to do. They have a large number of small planes that define them, are very expressive and full of subtle gesture. They are an investment of time to get right.

Coming up in the next session

Modeling from Life. The next session will cover the process of modeling the figure from life as well as other important points on figure modeling in general.

If there are specific topics that you would like addressed please
[post them here] and I will try to incorporate them into one of the next lessons.

Thank you.
-Scott Eaton