Chihuahua

[Garyo]

After a bit of a hiatus I'm back and now sculpting full time. Recently Green Whisker Works, my NY-Based studio, had a contest on FaceBook. The contest was simple, go on the Green Whisker Works page do the "like" thing and then post a picture of your pet. The prize, I would then sculpt your pet. After the deadline, I put everyone's name that posted in a hat a randomly pulled out one lucky winner. The winner was this little chihuahua Nacho. So I set to work on immortalizing him. This might be a bit sedate for some of the stuff that goes on at Concept art, but maybe I can turn him into a cyborg later... Here is a look into my process.

Day One

I start the sculpture by building an armature. Using a few photographs I begin to add clay to the sculpture. I don't need many photos at this point, mainly the mug shots front and side as well as a couple of 3/4 shots. I am not worried about details at this point, so I don't need many. Later I will use more of the reference photos provided (and you can not have too many pictures of your subject) toward the end of making the sculpture when I am working on the details. I'm getting ready to add the eyes. I feel the eyes are very important in creating a sculpture. That quote about "being windows to the soul." I feel is the foundation to figurative sculpture. This is true if I'm making a human or an animal. Maybe even more so with our pets. I know much of our communication with our pets can be expressed through eyes. So I take the time to measure using the photos as reference and transfer that to the clay sculpture. Here is Nachos progress after day one, not there yet, but you can see he is starting to emerge from the clay.

[JonKross]

awesome, and what a great idea for a contest. I feel like dogs would be fun to sculpt, I don't know why.

[Garyo]

Thanks Jon, I do enjoy making animals and doing pets is doubly rewarding when I get to see the look on the owners face.

Here is Day Two

Nacho's progress today is a bit more subtle than what I did on day one. In the first picture I'm working on the forehead and eyes, tightening up the structure of the Chihuahua. Nacho is proving a bit challenging because his fur is so light it is sometime hard to see the different planes in his face.

In the second and third picture, I am working on improving his snout and muzzle. Nacho has a wonderful doggie smile that I want to capture. A dog's nose I find is much like a finger print in that no two are the same. So I work on getting just the right shape for the nose.

By the fourth picture I'm on to more eye work again. Starting to get more detailed with the eyelid shape. I try to move on from spending too much time on one thing and loose overall focus. So I will work a little on something and then come back for another pass from time to time. I find this helps resolve the piece better over time.

For the final Day Two picture a profile shot. I feel the clay is starting to look more like him now and should be able to move on to details and fur at some point on Day Three

[Sergey Savenkov]

Good idea to make a bust cihuahua!
We also have two cihuahua :-)

[Garyo]

Somebody doesn't look happy about their wardrobe! I really enjoy doing peoples pets, almost as much as my own personal projects.

I thought I would do day three as a time lapse video as an experiment. I think I may try doing a whole project in time lapse at some point.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/xzJ_5rwugyQ

Garyo

[Garyo]

Day Four

Almost done now. Going for detail work now I start adding fur texture to little Nacho. I'm using a hard plastilene clay that is soft when heated and hard when cold. This lets me both model or add, as well as carve in the clay. That way I can get great detail without having to switch into different medium. The soft and hard abilities of this clay really help me out when I take a look at the eyes again. If you look at the 1st picture showing the second eye carved, you may notice at the moment Nacho the sculpture is wall-eyed. To fix this I can warm up the clay again for one eye socket and reposition the eye in the socket. It still needs a bit more tweaking, but you can see in the 3rd picture both eyes are now closer to looking at the same spot. So I leave it alone for a bit to do more of the fur work. I take my time and really try to go for how the fur falls on the animal. The clay I'm using lets me play a bit and lift up some fur and in other areas dig in to give a sense of the fluffy volume. Once I finish the fur, I make another pass at the eyes in the 5th picture and I think he is ready to show the client now. I'll check in next with the final client approval and how I mold and cast.

[JonKross]

freakin' adorable man, thanks for showing this step by step.