Basics Challenge Hands!

[Garyo]

Hey for 3 hours of work that looks great. Welcome aboard. I'm not sure when we'll close this one, but probably keep it for another week or so and close it with the Halloween thread.

Garyo

[Alan H.]

Cheers man: the blocking-in seemed to come fairly easily, but, now that I've got down to building the final masses of the hand I have the problem that everything just seems to keep getting bigger: this was intended to be a 1:1 lifesize piece, but it will probably end up 1:1 1/2 or something. I have this problem with a lot of my modelling, in that, whilst I can keep proportions reasonably accurately, this seems to come at the expense of an ever-growing sculpture. I guess the answer is more careful / regular measurement checks, but I was just wonderig if anyone else has the same difficulty, and if so, how they dealt with it?

Another hour on the first hand tonight...muscles of the thumb, palm and the first finger. Glad to hear this one is open for a few more weeks though: still got a fair way to go on these.

[Alan H.]

Right: things are coming together! This is the first hand and forearm almost completed with only some refinements to the sinews of the back of the hand and the shapes of the two curled fingers to go before the texturing starts, although I will probably leave that untill I have added the secnod hand (which is going to be formed round an armature that will grip the forearm of this one so that I can play with deforming the muscles of the arm as they are squeezed).

As ever, all comments and crits welcome!

[Alan H.]

Here are the images of my finished sculpture in crank and terracotta for this challenge. Overally, I am quite pleased with the proportions of the forms (though perhpas the fingers on the outstretched hand are a little thin?); the texturing never got as far as I would have liked, but I did find a pretty good method for knocking back the distracting shine/smoothness of the clay to something a bit more subtle and skin-like. Mixing up a thickish slip and simply painting it over the roughly smoothed piece with a stubby bristle brush gives a slight texture and a hint of direction in the surfaces, which worked really well on the palm of the hand. Also this method seems to fill any slight cracks or depressions in the model and leaves a pretty natural-looking surface.

I was aiming for the sense of one hand thrusting above a crowd or out of some deep pit etc. etc. being grasped strongly by another from belowand being pulled down...any comments as to whether this has come across well are welcome, as well as all crits of this piece: I value any input and help you could pass on.

Thankyou for taking the time to look at my work, and thanks Garyo for organising the challenge in the first place.

[Garyo]

That is a really nice pair of hands. Very porwerful and expressive. I really only have two minor crits... I'd say the wrist and forearm on the upper hand could use a wee bit more definition as I don't get the sence of the lower hand gripping and pulling as much as I think you are intending. The fingers should press into the flesh. Take a look at the Berninni vid that was posted in the main sculpting forum the other day. The other is the thiness of the fingers which you already felt. I think it might just be the middle finger needs a little extra beef. I really like what you have done and the piece has emotion for just being a pair of hands.

Garyo

[Rink]

Ooooh, that was an excellent choice of hand pose. Really liking the work there.

I can't believe how hard its becoming to find a few moments to work on my small effort. Its something I really need to finish, just for my own learning/development.

[Alan H.]

Cheers for the positive responses guys: glad I could make soemthing you found interesting btw hope you've found some time to pitch in on your hands since your last post Rink.

Garyo: Yup, the fingers need some work, and a bit of detailing would not go amiss on the rest of the piece so I have kept the clay moist in the hope of being able to return to fix these issues. Unfortunately, work seems to have a nastsy habit of taking up all of my free time lately, so this has been on the backburner for a while!

On a slightly related topic, I've recently got my hands on some firm Super Sculpey and have been working on miniature (about 1:5) sets of hands for one of my college briefs. I am really enjoying the work and feel as if I am improving gradually, but was wondering if any of you guys have any tips on specific techniques for modelling on this small scale, as I have never tried anything this small before, and find forming 2-3mm diameter fingers etc. slightly tricky

Regards

[Quensemn73]

Thank you for this interesting challenge, Eva It is soo new for me, but Ill try...
My question is Where does the photo placed on your page? center, left..bottom..or...