It seems like 90% of my work takes me to this same place.....the wall. The wall that I hit my head on, hoping it will bring back my vision and enthusiasm for a project. Many times I can push through it and find myself happily back on track. Sometimes not. I don't know which on this particular piece. Push through or shelve him for a bit?
After the first 3-4 days I began to slowly pull out various reference photos. I begain to measure my proportions and to spend more and more time online adding to my draft horse photo file. I have thousands of horse magazines in the studio in big drifts, waiting for the day I finally get frustrated enough to flip through them and harvest the photos I want. I envision a day when everything is all sparkley happy organized and I can reach for a binder full of photos organized by pose, breed, head studies, etc. For some reason I avoid starting the process. Maybe this is what my draft horse is telling me to do?
Anyhow, back to the big guy. I find a tendancy in myself to want to detail things before it's time. Sometimes I give in to it and muscle out a shoulder, only to have to destroy all that work when I find that the should was too big/too small several days later when I measure it out again. It's hard to keep your eye on the big picture and do things in the proper order. Measuring and taking the thing in from across the room are boring. Sculpting eyes and hair=fun!!!!!!
I now have tons of photos on my laptop of various European draft breeds. A fellow hobbyist took the time to send me a bunch of pics I didn't have. I am finding myself drawn to the French drafters, the Bretons and Comtois. I am also very partial to the old style Belgians, and have several photos of horses from the early 1900's. In fact, my original inspiration came from a painting that appeared on a magazine cover in 1907 of a Belgain horse being shown in hand. It doesn't say who the painter was, but the style is similar to George Ford Morris.
So, today I will either do battle with my creative demons and win, or I will cut photos out of my giant piles of magazines (shudder). Or I will avoid it all together and clean house (the worst thing to do!). Hmmmf!
1 comment:
What an interesting post! It's so easy for a beginning sculptor like me to imagine that someone like you just cheerfully breezes through all of your sculpting process without any problems, when in reality it's hard for all of us at times to motivate ourselves on a project. Hopefully it will call out to you soon and you can regain enthusiasm.!
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