I spent most of the summer teaching myself how to make armatures for small air-drying clay sculptures. My goal was to make as many armatures as possible (out of wire) and to try out a variety of air-drying clay products.
That’s what I did. I used wire purchased from Home Depot and Dollarama; I also used wire that I found in ditches. Here is a sampling of what I worked on this past summer.
In FIN131, I had made a dozen or so wooden creatures. I hadn’t “finished” them by the end of the course, so I continued to work on them through the spring and summer. This is my first attempt at an armature. Although the first armature was intended to be for a standing figure, once I added the clay, the figure became too heavy, so I had to lay her down and then I was inspired to make some clay boots for her, and paint them red. The next figure I made, with blue boots. I switched briefly to an oil based (non-drying) Plastilena, because I found 10 blocks of Plastilena at a yard sale. I really enjoyed working with Plastilena because I found it more versatile and pliable (because it does not dry). For the armatures on all these pieces I was using a plastic coated aluminum wire, which is all I could get in the gauge I wanted. The upside is that the armature is very solid, but the downside is that I could not bend the wire in strong right angles, so I have this figure with arms that look like bows.In July, I made a number of figures for which I used wire armature barely covered with LaDoll clay. I used a human skeleton model as my reference, and was trying to get a better sense of the proportions of the human body while focusing on the pelvis, or the scapula, or the sternum. I didn’t concern myself with the details of faces yet.These entities live in one of my windows and the sky makes an ever-changing backdrop. I’m quite fond of them. End of July, 2021, class photo. I spent July fine tuning the wooden pieces from FIN131 and studying the human skeleton.
In August, I focused on trying to fill out the figures that I made. This meant that my armatures became a little more complex…well, I used more wire. I wanted to create larger figures, at least larger in terms of volume.
Here are some examples:
It’s a real struggle for me to keep adding more clay to fill out the figures more than I am. I’d like to get away from skinny figures. so, I made a dog, and that helped me to start to flesh things out a bit. I also worked on this figure, called “Time”. Still really skinny. I think, as I look at this now, the skinniness comes from a lack of confidence on my part, a kind of holding back. I love to hang things so that I can see them in silhouette. The dog armature became this dog, and the armature on the right is my attempt to get a more voluminous figure.Yeah, I love silhouettes, and this entity and it’s dog sit up on crates in my window with the changing sky behind them. Finally, this opera singer is my “breakout” piece. She has volume.The opera singer was begging to be accompanied by a cowpoke. So, a cowpoke.Armature for the Skipping Man (with scarf)Skipping Man (with scarf)I made this little dog for my dog, but he is not really that impressed.
Spätblühendes Künstlertagebuch 