TL;DR:
Clay sculpture might seem crazy but it’s way more accessible that one could believe. If you are not versed into art and want to experience something quite new, that’s definitely a good choice.
In the Firenze school I attended, every new student achieved a great piece of work in no time thanks to the teachers: Alessandro and Lorenzo.
The following is an article about my journey as a total novice without prior experience in any form of visual art where you will find some clay sculpture tips along the way.
Out of the comfort zone
Trying new activities to broaden your mind is widely shared on the internet and I strongly believe in it, but belief and action don’t always go hand in hand. Sometimes you need a little bit more to move your a**. That’s why I regularly decide to do random choices and the farthest they bring me from my past experiences the better.🎲
I’ve been spending a year as a so-called “digital nomad” which basically means working remotely in foreign countries. Half of it has been spent in the beautiful city of Florence, a city which can light up one’s curiosity for art.
So, what could be the wildest art-related learning experience I could have there?
Sculpture, definitely.
I would have loved to start on marble but it would have required multiple years of work to reach a decent result. So the school teachers showed me how clay can be a great medium to start sculpting.
As you will see, clay is soft with you, it is a world where irremediable mistakes do not exist. It is liberating and help focus the mind on visual and tactile senses.
The first chunk of clay
When I arrived at my sculpture course in the Academia d’Arte in Firenze, everything felt magical. At least for me, being a sculptor felt like a myth, an art accessible solely to pure geniuses.
Such a belief can easily stop you from even trying if you start to think about it. Instead, you would be better off starting with a simple question:
How does one even start to sculpt?
As simple as it sounds, one does start by finding a school, enrol in a course and hopefully end up like me in a beautiful sculpture workshop.
After a quick chat with the teachers, here you are in front of a big block of clay, a tripod ready to sustain your masterpiece and a simple goal:
Create the volumes…
And it’s not as simple as it sounds. It is actually the most tiring part.
One does not just take big chunks of clay and stick them to the board until they fill the necessary volume.
No, if you do that you will end up with a recipe for disaster: microscopic air bubbles will hide between the different chunks and at the end when you cook it (yes, you will cook it), those air bubbles will expand due to heat and literally destroy your masterpiece.😱
To avoid this fate, one must cut small chunks of clay from the main block, compress it multiple time in one’s own hands and only then, stick them on the board (or already stuck clay) with multiple strong pressure to make sure it sticks well and, no air bubble can be hiding neither inside chunks nor between them.
After 3 hours of intense physical work (and that’s not a joke), I ended up tired and with this result:
Not that awesome and quite disappointing, but that’s something I guess.
I tried my best to create the volume for the shoulders and the face. Anyone can see that it’s not round at all like a face and especially my teachers who kept repeating that I had to create an egg-like shape.
One more hour later it was finally achieved and I could start to carve.💥
Starting to carve a face
The first step is to have a skull (for real) and to look at it. The first teacher I worked with, Alessandro, explained to me how the bones actually support the human face and showed me where to carve and where to keep volumes to reach a generic face structure.
He then started the work on one side and I had to copy his work on the other side (Below on the left, you can try to guess which half face is from who 🧐).
2 more hours of work to carve a generic face structure.
Notice the line in the middle, it is repeatedly redrawn again and again. This is your only guide on how to balance the face along with the work you do, a compass to reach, not symmetry, but harmony!
Take some time to think about the difference between harmony and symmetry. Sculpture can also be a meditative journey. 🧘🏻♀️
Back to the work, I needed to add clay for the nose, carve the mouth and the lips and kept improving the general shape of the face. I also had to work on the shoulders a little bit.
3 hours of intense focus later:
And 3 more hours later:
A wild human face appeared! 😲
He is still a little bit chubby but it was enough to start working on the eyes. Alessandro showed how one does that by adding some clay inside the holes and start to carve them.
Noticed the pattern here? Again and again, one adds volume to carve it later and this is why clay is soft on you.
You carve too much? No problem, add back some clay.
You add too much? No problem, carve it more!
No mistakes are carved in the stone… 😏
Once one has understood this, one start to feel the fun of this art.
This is the beauty of clay.
3 hours of fun later, the eyes:
First, one shapes the general structure of the eyes. This is what you can see above: generic expressionless eyes.
Then, one can start to carve the details, which is when everything “happens”. Emotions start to take place on this so far dead face.
It took 2 hours and a half to details the eyes. The second teacher of the class Lorenzo showed his greatness for this and carved one, again I had to copy it. (Below, you can try again to guess which one is from who 🤔)
Also, I added some clay around the head for a future helmet.
3 hours of eye carving and volume adding later:
Yeah, I know, it looks like an unfriendly old woman… But sometimes one needs to walk a strange path to reach satisfaction.
Now is a good time to introduce to you my impossible goal so you can wonder with me how is it even possible to reach such a quality: Il Perseo con la testa di Medusa, a bronze sculpture from Benvenuto Cellini.
A lot of work was still needed. But at that moment, some questions arose. Will I even be able to create those curvy hairs? Will I be able to create the helmet wings?
Time was running out, sadly. I had to make a choice. The hair will be done but the wings will have to be left out. 😔
Little I knew that I would mainly spend the rest of the time working on those hairs and his helmet…
3 hours on the front hairs:
3 hours on the right-side hairs and the generic helmet shape
4 more hours on left-side hairs and the helmet.
At that point, I was working for a total of 28 hours distributed over several weeks. It was July and Firenze is known to be a warm city in summer. We had to protect the shoulders from drying completely so we added a wet tissue.
Also, a terrible task was now upon me. I’ve done enough work and enough details. I had to cut it in multiple pieces and empty my masterpiece😱
Why? Again this has to do with the cooking. The less clay you cook, the more you maximise your chances of keeping it in one piece. Also, this will make your statue much lighter.
Before going on and cutting my face into pieces, I had to make sure that it won’t collapse. So we added a big chunk of clay under the chin to support the whole face. 💪🏼
We were ready to start the process. We had to:
- Cut the statue in multiple pieces
- Carve them out to leave only 1cm of clay everywhere. This is kind of scary: one has to avoid creating holes from inside-out.
- Stick it back together using some very fresh and wet clay.
- Finally, hide the cicatrices of this terrible event.
And this process had to be done in only one session, of course.
The whole process took 4 hours to complete:
Since my statue was pretty big, we had to make sure the shoulders wouldn’t collapse when we would stick back all the pieces so we had to add 2 other big chunks of clay inside the shoulders (middle image).
The fresh wet clay is called “Barbotina” and if you do this process, don’t be shy. You can add plenty.
When sticking back the pieces together, you must see the “Barbotina” trickle out of the borders. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of this part. 😞
Where did go all the clay inside the head?
Let me show my real masterpiece: The Garbage face, an eco-neo-classical art piece 🤯
After sticking back everything together. 12 more hours of work were still awaiting me. I had to polish details of the hairs, the face and the helmet.
12 more hours of work:
After I finally finished this work, I was so happy! And this is when fear took upon me, a tiny voice in my head saying:
I’m sure I left too much clay when carving the inside of the head. This means that my masterpiece will explode when cooked.
Ho lord, please no! 😨
But again, clay is soft on the soul, no mistakes are set in the stone.
I had 2 choices:
- Opening it again and carve the inside more
- Dig small holes everywhere in the faces.
I would have chosen the first if I had more time, it’s a cleaner way to ensure the work is done well. But that was my last lesson and 4 hours might not be enough to open it, carve it, stick it back, clean the result and finish the details.
So I went with the holes. I took a long clean stick from a Japanese sushi restaurant (that you can see below) and started to drill my beloved head. This way, I would ensure that air bubbles could escape easily from the clay, at least at those points…
Then, you can add back clay to the holes to make sure the surface is clean.
The result
In the end, here what I obtained 👀
Here I was, It was finally finished!
Now the clay has to dry for a month and a half. Then the time will come when It will be cooked and heated hopefully in one piece.
I’ll update this post if it succeeds 🤓
Tooling
To conclude, let me introduce the tools that help me go through this journey. It’s a happy mix of real tools and random stuff like this Japanese restaurant wood pick and the nail.
In order:
- The 2 first tools are the most important ones, the curves and angles are not randoms. They are made to ease the work. You can carve precisely with them.
- The 4 next tools are made to remove clay. Thanks to their shape you can carve deeply round/flat/curvy holes easily.
- The brush allows one to clean/flatten/soften the results in tiny corners of the work
- The nail and the stick helped me to create holes.
- Finally, the sponge is your final tool to soften your whole work.
Last words
I hope I started your curiosity about sculpture.
All the people I saw while taking my course were filled with excitement and happiness but also focus and peace.
It was really an enlightening experience that I recommend for everybody.
Thanks a lot for reading until the end.
Cheers! 🍸
