Here is a picture of the IronFaes that I took a while back. The third one from the left (Sheneal) is the first.
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She was actually made twice. After finishing her, I took her into the powder coaters and mistakenly told them to powder coat her black to match the fence. She lost all her detail - not that I had that much detail on the first faerie but the little that I did have I wanted to show. So I ground off all of the black and welded more material onto her dress and face.
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It is always the face that I have the most problem with. Which is, of course, why I started sculpting in clay: when a mistake is made on an iron faerie face there is nothing to do but to weld some more skin on and since I have a mig welder and the faerie faces are so small, it basically means starting over.
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I had many restarts. Too many and I wasn't getting better. So I picked up some clay that I had gotten from a sculpting show (for free - they give the stuff away hoping to hook you). I got hooked. Forming faces in 3 dimensions was both more gratifying and more frustrating than I could have imagined.
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Before this I had tried my hand sculpting a few objects: the thinker, strawberry shortcake, a turtle and a pelican. I did the thinker in wax in my high school years. I was proud enough to give it to my at-the-time girl friend. She liked it so much that she set it on her window sill just before going on vacation. Perhaps if we had lived in Seattle the thinker would still be 3 dimensional but the hot Illinois sun forced me to rename it "The Puddle."
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Anyway, back to the point: I had only sculpted entire figures, and faces only had a supporting role (except the turtle which has no face because I ran out of rock surface to put it on) .
Attempting to sculpt a one third size face turned out to be the perfect challenge for me. I had to bring much of what I knew about faces out of the recesses of my mind and into a place where I could use it to carve at the right spot or add clay at the right spot.
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And then I tried making the face actually look like someone that I knew. Well, it appears that people have the ability to distinguish one face out of millions of faces. (you know, the way one penguin recognizes its mother in a crowd of black and white look alikes) And this ability, while not at the forefront of peoples minds, is very accurate and can discredit any face that I sculpt in mere nanoseconds.
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I did find that making the faces life size is much easier. I suppose because my own subconscious comes into play or I don't have to think about it, I just set my mind on copying what I see..... I think, the former more than the latter....
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And so my FaeIron project was put on hold for about a year, at least the face part of it, while I sculpted one third size heads everywhen I had a spare minute. Waiting at the doctor's office, meetings at work, airports (I don't do that anymore after the liquid/gel tight-down) and even when I helped with the technical stuff at church (actually I only pressed the space bar on the computer to make the next slide come up, but some people would consider that technical).
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Recently I have sculpted a skull and made a mold out of it. I then create skulls of resin or wax and build the faces on top of that. With more practice I will eventually be able to reproduce a face accurately and then I can start on styles and artisms.
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All through the building of the fence I have treated the project as practice. It has helped me get over my perfectionism. I do the best that I can with the abilities that I have at the time and at some point I say "well, it is just practice anyway" and about 10% of the time that actually allows me to move onto the next phase.
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I am treating this blog in exactly the same way. Many years ago I thought that I would be a writer. That did not happened and I am nowhere near where I think I should be in terms of skill in turning a phrase. But I am starting where I really am (no matter how hard it is to accept) and at some point I will publish because it is all just practice anyway.
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I used to say that everything is practice until you are 55. And then you have to do it for real. I have to amend that because I turned 55 and I have not had enough practice yet. Maybe when I am 60 or 65, but for now practice makes more practice. It is, of course, the journey, not the destination.....
