WOW BODY!

Check out this INCREDIBLE body from January 15th and compare it to the bodies of the new girls a few blogs ago... WAY different, I love it, I love both really, but man this body is so much a part of what it represents which is abundance and earthy mounds and hills and just totally woman.  The new bodies are a different way to perceive the figure, both I love, but bods like this will take a break for a little while. "

The breats are the big difference, almost strapped on here and stretching to the gravitational limits, the new girls barely even have developed breasts.

Korean Girl photos

Korean girl in traditional dress - the making of

Here are some progression photos of the Korean girl.  Starting out, whenever I know they will be fully clothed I try and save clay by making very thin limbs... not so with nude ones or ones with tight fitting clothing.  Theoretically you could use wire or even nothing at all inside but toilet tissue or aluminum foil, but I do like some definition of the body underneath the clothing. 

Red clay is added.

White clay is added

Sleeves...

And finally the little green bow is added, I paint her face/hair and bake her up!

Korea

Looks like the girl on the right wants to be made into a polymer clay figure :-o

push

I pushed her shoulders down a bit, they were just too square and angular.

And then there were three

Im on a roll, what can I say?

A third figure has been born!
This one I photographed next to one of the recent finished works just to show the very different size and shape the new bodies have.  The hips are just as wide, the stomach protrudes just as much, but the torso is slimmer and the shoulders less broad, the head is smaller, and (again) the breasts are much flatter and smaller; in a sense, they are simply more PEAR shaped (as Pearl so eloquently pointed out).

And then there were two

Wow, less than 24 hours and another girl is born!
Last night (late) I created the girl in the last blog, today after waking up midday, I have made a second one, remarkably similar, yet different.  She is posed differently and her stomach is different, she also has less muscle definition and sort of has simplified limbs like her arms are basically cylinders.  I feel like they should be named!  I want them to have names so that when I talk about them later I can have a reference point besides this blog.  Anyway, now there are two girls, beautiful beautiful women.  I really like the new body type, digging the narrow top (due to small breasts), with the bulbous center, big strong thighs, tapering down to smaller elongated calfs and pointed feet. 

I think the small breasts work on these new figures because everything else is so strong and abundant, with everything extra large they would seem a living venus of willendorf.  The shrunken against the swollen adds balance in a way.  Haha, I may change my mind tomorrow but for now this is how I feel.

The figures are being put aside for painting and design later when i really want a figure to work on but may not have the inspiration or time to do so.  Although right now I am preoccupied with the aesthetic of the phsyical form, there will be times when I just want to paint or when im inspired by something and will not have the time to sculpt, so these girls at that moment, will be my saving grace. 

new figure, new body

Bla bla bla blogging!
So I was feeling like I was all dried up creatively until today.  I made a woman who is the first of a few girls that are being made to be used soon as "backup girls".  They are girls that will be used when I get inspired to paint!  I cannot always sculpt on the spot and sometimes designs need to be allowed out of my head faster than I can make a girl.
So anyway, here is one, I think she may be painted with a simple black or brown line drawings, maybe henna-esque with dark hair.  When sculpting her, I felt like I wanted a different take on the body.  Instead of HUGE breasts and wide hips, I wanted moderate yet still feminine hips and very small breasts with a large belly, perhaps one in which people might mistake her for pregnant.  People ask and ask and ask and are very interested in why a certain scultpures body looks a certain way, here is my explanation, I do what appeals to me, they are mine and thus I can express my ideal... this is not objectifying women.  Even if they had GIANT breasts, tiny waists, and Angelina Joile lips, they would not be being objectified if they were my creations and my personal ideals at the time.  My ideal at this moment (which could change tomorrow) is wide hips, small brasts, and a slightly protruding belly all on a body with elongated limbs and somewhat small feet and somewhat large hands.  here are some pictures of the girl I just finished.   You can see from the side photo how much her stomach really sticks out. 

Oh hey

This picture is posted on my tumblr account on April 28th, 2011, but I think I made it before then, I made a slew of colorful girls when i was in the hospital (not being admitted!) with Marshall.

In it you can see the larger blue girl with her eyes being covered by her wrists; well, today she awoken and is beautiful!  I separated her fingers to give her hands a more animated look and they are still up near her face.  The clay is amazingly as soft as ever and I wonder what she will end up being.  Who is she and why did she come when she did? 
Its funny because a couple of years ago I got into making figures on the bus/train/plane or wherever I was idle (in this case hospital waiting room) and LATER I would use the figures all ready to go when I was inspired to paint/design/dress/bake figures.  It worked out great because at times I would be REALLY inspired to do a cool line or henna pattern only to not be in the mood to sculpt an entire figure and by the time one was sculpted, the moment of inspiration had passed me by.  So stockpiling figures was a great thing for me... when I was inspired to make a certain kind of unpainted figure I still could, but it was just really convenient to have them when I needed. 
So this aqua girl has awoken see below.

Now comes the really really fun part.  What story does she have to tell? She has already told a story, one of being born into a world and not willing to "see" or perhaps having been in a deep sleep for a while, why was her pose the way it was before? Has she grown as a person and now willing to open her eyes up to reality and see the truth that exists? That there is nothing to fear and that she was meant to see with more than her physical eyes? Who knows!  She may have more transformations yet, but be assured that I am going to begin sculpting figures again for the sake of design, I love painting small scale and in 3-D so the first step is to actually get some things to paint.
Toodles. 

Tory work and the Guatemala lady in her natural scene

Howdy.
I took all of the items out of my etsy.com store (minifigure), and may be closing down the other (beautifulclayflowers).   I have deeply embraced the kitsch/novel cubes as of late.  Small things filled with lots of "stuff" really appeals to me.  Dont get me wrong "high art" is nice too, but there is something about the novel little figure in his/her happy habitat that really really speaks to my inner child, igniting a sense of wonder and imagination.

Below is a photo Tory took of a cube I recently gave her.

Below that is the latest work which has a figure/doll that I actually did not make, It is one of the worry dolls (the larger size) that I got when I was in Guatemala a year ago, it took me a whole year to use even one thing I took from there as I cherish my Pacific volcanic rocks and woven dolls very much, but I am ready to make lots of teeny tiny cubes (smaller than my current size of almost 2"x3") with the smallest worry dolls in them, with lots of moss, flowers and pottery :) life is good :)

One of my fondest Childhood memories of all was creating with Aunt Christyl a diorama out of an old shoe box and using cardboard and magazine clippings made the most amazing 3-D collage-style work of art I have ever seen.  There were rabbits, plants, and other things that memory does not serve me to remember :-p
Anyhoot, Im still that kid, and its a healing process to create these little wonders.  I never want to stop!