Galleria Romanelli, Face Study

For the final project this summer before the gallery closes in August, I worked on another Bernini sculpture, this one from the "Ecstacy of Santa Theresa" As with the last sculpture from Bernini, this one would be a challenge. It was decided that since I did not have much experience with faces this would be a good exercise.

The clay I used this time would be a different type. It seemed to have some iron grit mixed into it, that made it much stronger then the smooth clay I had been using earlier. When I started the sculpture I still had some of the smooth older clay left over and used it as the base. This would be a bad decision, and the weaker smooth clay as the base kept allowing the stronger clay on top to move. It took my some time to see this was happening. As the program came to a close, It still was not perfect, but was much closer then my earlier attempts at the human face.

First 30 minutes. At this point I was just trying to get the rough shape down, to build up as the clay gets harder. 

Because I started the base of the sculpture with left over softer clay, the sculpture would start to lean backwards as I was building up the mass. This would continue until I built up a large support to the back of the sculpture.

Here the rearward lean of the sculpture became evident. The new clay with grit hardened much quicker than the older smooth clay so I would build up clay over the present features to fix the angle.

Here I have fixed the eyes, and work on correcting the angle of the nose and filling out the cheeks. The sculpture was gradually slipping to the right as the soft clay in the base compressed. This would throw off my measurements later.

Here I am working on the right eye. It becomes apparent that the sculpture has tilted to the right, I will have to undue changes I made earlier to fix it.

Here can be seen the tilt to the right of the nose. This was caused by the sculpture slowly tilting to the right. Now the tilt will have to be fixed.

One method to fix a tilt in a clay sculpture is to take a dry clump of clay and wedge it into the area that needs to be raised. Then press fresh clay into the gap.

Here the angles are fixed, and mass is added to make the cheeks fuller.

At the end of my last day in the studio before it closes in August for summer break. It is time to finish up for the summer, but I learned a good deal. The statues nose mouth and eyes are improved, although the cheeks are a little puffy and probably need to be worked down. Still it is a vast improvement of my earlier attempts at working on faces. It was a good ending project to an interesting summer internship.