untitled...

posted by Arna:

SK8 art...

Posted by Arna:

Check this out! Starts next week in the the Distillery District. A show of decorative skateboards, the collaboration between two artists, Harvey Chan and Jon Todd:

Harvey was my first sculpture teacher at Toronto School Of Art.

QuickSketchClayPortraitFun

Posted by Arna. To see more views of this piece, please click the photo and that will take you to our Flickr. Once there, please click 'all sizes' on the photo to see the larger version.

CentralTechJan_07_2

Posted by Arna:

This model had an athletic and angular frame that inspired this rough treatment. You can see more views of the piece on our Flickr site. Please click the image above and once you're there, click 'all sizes' to view a larger version of the image.

4 legged house...

posted by Arna:

An idea for a structure I would build of transparent material, with lights inside so it glows a bit. It could walk like Howl's Moving Castle. I'd set it in a city square or a farmer's field and then watch where it goes!

Sculpt and doodle...

Posted by Arna:

A recent piece done in three nights at Central Technical school. The most enjoyable part of the process was slapping the figure onto a roughed-in raised slab during the last half hour of the third night. I like the contrast between the worked figure and the less textured platform she's reclining on.

This is a sketchdoodle of no one in particular, but the model for the piece above was an influence.

Cast in cement part 2...

Posted by Arna:

Here's the completed mold:

But I spoke too soon! I then added 'handles' of burlap to the outside of the mold:

Two instructors at Central Technical School open another student's mold to remove the clay:

Lining the cement in layers on the inside of the mold:

Here's another view of the two halves of the mold. I built the cement up a bit more, but not too thick. Then (no pictures for the next stage) I added strips of fiberglass soaked in a thin slop of cement, to make the piece strong.

The cement sculpt newly removed from the mold, with the light 'bloom' forming on the surface:

The finished piece stained with a furniture polish and rubbed with a brass barbecue brush to give it a brass patina:

All done.

Cast in cement part 1...

Posted by Arna:

I decided to do my first cement cast piece from a clay sculpture shown in this previous post. The casting process was well worth documenting, even though I only have pictures of some of the steps. It took me ten sessions to do the entire cement cast. Compare that to just three sessions to do the original clay sculpt! Casting takes a lot longer than sculpting. I made this piece at Central Technical School in Toronto.

Here's the first side of the mold built up over the clay figure:

We 'throw' or 'splash' plaster at the clay to form the mold:

Another view of the back:

More to come in a second post...

More Niko...

Posted by Arna:

These shots are slightly out of focus, but they show the other views of the sculpt posted below, so I figured people might like to see them. I took these shots with a Minolta point-and-shoot camera, in black and white film, then scanned them in colour.

The model, Niko, is a latin dancer who performs from time to time at Lula Lounge in Toronto. I think he'd been dancing till late the night before, because he'd come in to our Saturday morning classes and sit for us and look more and more sleepy as the session wore on. I think he was a good model, sleepy or not.

Niko...

Posted by Arna:

I did this two years ago in a sculpting class at the Toronto School Of Art. The model's name was Niko. I think I spent about four, three-hour sessions on the piece. He's just a little smaller than life size, made with Tucker's low fire white clay.

After I took this shot, I cut the head in half and hollowed it out. Then I put the head back together. He's been lying around since then, because we had no facilities to fire him. Now, I'm hoping to finally see it finished. A kind instructor at Central Technical School offered to fire him! Can't wait to see how he turns out...

lost...

A few weeks ago, I finished a torso posted earlier and had some time left over to do a quick clay sketch during the last half of sculpture class. I took some photos of the quick piece then threw it back into the clay bin. A week later, someone had fished the now broken-off head of the bust out of the bin, and stuck it like a cannibal trophy on top of a pole in the corner. It looked pretty funny. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that. Anyhow, the sculpture is now gone and here are the photos:




For those who wish to know, it was about 12 inches high. And I now like it better than the torso that I kept. (posted by Arna)

sculpture class...

I'm taking a sculpture class Wednesday nights at Central Technical School in Toronto. The first photo shows the piece in progress before I gave it a face. (Posted by Arna)