![\"\"](\"http:\/\/washiparagone.blogtown.co.nz\/files\/2010\/02\/DSC00020-Medium.jpg\" "\\"Covering")
<\/a>Caption: Covering the armature with wet clay<\/p><\/div>\n
First we made an armature out of a wood post screwed upright onto a square base board.\u00a0 We covered it with a large paper ball on top of the post.\u00a0 The paper had to be packed together to make a solid base to put the clay on.\u00a0 Plastic is pulled tight over the ball and down the post with tape.\u00a0 This is so the head can be removed easily and also so the clay doesn’t stick. We then built up the Southern Stoneware clay over the top, by attaching it a small piece at a time.\u00a0 The Clay comes from the south island.\u00a0 Our tutor likes to use local clay, not imported clay.\u00a0 Hey makes sense to me.<\/p>\n
We needed to get the coverage fairly thick to enable plenty of depth to carve features out later and yet not too thick or the clay would sag and\/or make more work later when we hollow out the head from the inside.\u00a0 As we attached the wet clay a piece at a time we attempted to get a general head shape.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Caption: Side view of bust, first stage<\/p><\/div>\n
As you can see however the jaw line was not defined enough and the whole face slopes outwards on an angle at the bottom of the jawline. \u00a0 So with a push here and a cut there I managed to remove quite a bit of the jaw underneath and add more on the side to give him a better jaw line.\u00a0 I also made the face more perpendicular by cutting straight down from the forehead.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Caption: Marking out the facial features, stage 2.<\/p><\/div>\n
The next stage was to mark out where the eyes, nose and mouth would go.\u00a0 The jaw line needed looking at again and I think I placed the eyes too high bringing up the rest of the face too high as well.\u00a0 So I added the features down some what. \u00a0 I think now that I should have moved them down even further.<\/p>\n