HOW TO MAKE A SCULPTURAL CLOCK pt.2C

Hey YouTube, Jean-Pierre here, bringing you the final video for the Sculptural Clock Project Part 2, that's modeling the sculpture for the top of the clock. Very French. And let me start out by telling you, there once was an obsessive compulsive Frenchman who developed the habit of showering once a day. Think about that while you eat your freedom fries, me fellow Americans. Anyway, on a more serious note, I just want to say thanks for coming along with me on this journey. I've been wanting to do this for a couple years now, so I'm really happy that I've gotten this far. To be honest, I'm a little intimidated about making the clock, but also really thrilled to do it at the same time. So I think that that's a really sweet place to be, is when you're scared and thrilled at the same time. This is going to be the conclusion of Part 2, and the only thing that I have yet to do is the medallion, which is going to go on the bob of the clock. And so that's, as I mentioned in previous videos, going to be its own video. So anyway, I just want to play some French music. This is Claude Debussy, Claire de Lune, the extended version. And I'm just going to play that in the background while I talk about this clock, and I'll probably stumble through this. But you know, when you're playing live music while you're talking, it's kind of hard to do edits. So anyway, the French hat, I don't know why I feel so French today. Maybe it's because I haven't shaved in a while. But my wife and I, I snagged this off of a street vendor in Paris when we went there. I think we went there about nine years ago now. It's forever ago. So what I'm really doing at this point with this piece, this sculpture, is just raking down the surfaces. So with the primary, secondary, and tertiary forms, probably said that last one wrong. We've got it roughed in, dialed in, and now we're just working on the details. So where the secondary forms are still a little rough and not completely smooth, like if you were to do the touch-up work on it, you would see the uneven surfaces. This tool, it's a finer tool. I have one that's a lot rougher. This one has the wire wrap around the loop. Check out my video on how to make tools for sculpting to see how I made this. But this one is going to help me bring those surfaces down to a very consistent movement through the plane of the form. And the goal is, when I'm using this rake tool, is to get the form so consistent that when I take a brush to it, a rough brush, it can finish the job without leaving the surface looking too varied. So the brushes that you'll see later on that I use, one is a hog's hair brush. It's just a kind of a throwaway brush, perhaps. A friend from undergrad gave it to me probably, I don't know, 14 years ago. It's a hog's hair painter's brush and I just cut it super short and that gave me really stiff bristles. And I've used that as kind of like a very fine type of rake tool. And then I have a sable brush to take it past that if the hog's hair brush doesn't really do it. And then I just use a liquid of sorts. I've used lighter fluid. I may have used acetone. But I've come to the conclusion that spit is pretty effective saliva. So, you know, I can't stand behind that it's safe to do. But if you choose to wet your brush with your own spit, you know, that's a risk you're going to have to make on your own. I think this clay that I use is pretty safe. So it is salt for free. And I got it from a small little company in Huntington, Indiana. Anyway, so here I am just cleaning up the details of the piece. You can see that I've done a little work off the camera in between parts. I ended up having probably four hours of footage that I had to try to condense down into 15 minutes. So I didn't show all the footage and some of it would probably bore you to tears. So I just went ahead and did some editing. Here you can see I used the tool that I used for my secondary forms that I'm just trying to make that surface a little more consistent. And since it is the base, I'm not really worried about trying to make it look boringly smooth. And those are things to consider. You know, leaving texture and things like that leaves the surface looking a lot more interesting. But when it's across the whole thing, it can become boring again. So I took my fettling knife and I smoothed it down after I had knocked it down with the rake tool. And it kind of creates kind of like a German schmear type surface that the masons would use on the bricks, you know, when they would lay the walls. And then they would kind of go over it with a kind of like a stucco surface of sorts. So that creates a really interesting surface, I think. Here you can see I've transitioned to the brush. And this brush is helping me knock down those marks. And now on some of these forms that aren't so detail minded, like the cloth, the drapery, things like that, I don't go completely nuts trying to make that look like polished marble or anything like that. I think some of that texture is really interesting. If you've ever seen pieces in galleries or museums that they leave that texture, I think it just creates more visual interest. So I'm not interested in eliminating that. And it would probably create more work than I would want to deal with anyway. You know, and I was thinking about this while I was working on this piece that, you know, just as a philosophical approach, I think stone cutters, sculptors that work in marble almost created a, I don't know, a neurosis for additive sculptors that work in clay and such, because those surfaces are riddled with finger marks and uneven textures and things like that. You know, the stone sculptor, he can get to or she, you know, gets to the point and I'm thinking of some of the old Italians. Sorry about the gender there. So he or she, you know, can knock down that surface and then use their tools to kind of end up getting it to an area where they want to sand it flat or smooth. And if you want to cast these in bronze, you can do that as well. But I think that there is a real beauty in the organic approach of clay, but it can also make you crazy if you try to make your clay as smooth as stone. So don't. That's my recommendation. I think that it's better to just leave that human touch in those pieces and try not to machine it out to look so smooth. Okay, so I just wanted to point out a few things here. I laid this down on its side so that I could get into this area and shrink this down. This was originally up to here and out to here and that may have worked fine originally, but I realized I needed to add this. There's a one inch piece of that pink board underneath here. And when I did that, this was exceedingly high. So I brought that back down and I added over here one inch of pink board to help balance out the characters here. And that cloth in the back here, it actually makes a type of arch. So I just wanted to re-center this and that's why I filled that in. I realized that the gears did not necessarily need all the room that I had in there originally. So this little nook is going to be sweet for what it is and that'll make more sense later. But while I laid this down on its side, I was able to get in here and clean up a lot of stuff. So down in here there was a lot of rake marks and such that I was able to get into. I redid the drapery over here and I also noticed that the legs were really wonky. I mean they're not perfect, but boy do they look better than they did. So I was able to work on this the last couple days and try to correct what we're looking at now. And that really allowed me to get under here too. So that was a win-win. And plus, you know, the way that this clock is setting, it's going to be up on the wall. So the viewpoint may actually not be head on like this. It may be slightly up. So here we are back to sculpting the face. Such a beautiful face. Now let me just say that getting into this part of the face is much easier when you remove these model's heads from the bodies. This would be a real pain to get in there and do this from underneath, especially with their heads down touching their clavicle there, mandible on the clavicle because they're sleeping. That can be very challenging. So to take these off and to get all that stuff dialed in ahead of time is very nice. And then the only thing that I really have to worry about at that point when I get it back on is the seam in the neck. So, you know, make sure that when you have it off you're looking at that head, you know, at the right angle because it's going to be facing down. Make sure that that's what you want, okay? So now that I have the heads pretty much where I want them, you know, detail-wise and such, I went ahead and fused them together. And, you know, I've heard a sculptor say, well, don't think about the mold when you're sculpting the piece because then you compromise the sculpture. But I'm also a mold maker and I have a mind for machines and when I say that I mean mechanical means. So I'm thinking about the mold the whole time I'm sculpting it. So I'm trying to eliminate these hollows that are going to be too difficult for a mold or this particular piece. I think there is a place for hollows and holes through sculptures and even in my own work, but at this particular time for this particular piece I don't want to do that. So I'm plugging the gaps between their heads, underneath hands, and between arms and legs, and that type of thing. I just want this to flow all together. I think that there's enough coves and niches, things of that nature that create a visual interest and a contrast between the highlights and the depth of the darks there. So, and for those of you that aren't familiar with the acronym C.R.A.P., we have Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. And contrast creates a lot of visual interest. You don't want to go gangbusters and just make something completely white or black. Have your 50 shades of gray in between, but definitely draw some interest there. So you see here we have the plans. So stick around for those clock cutting plans in the next video. We're wrapping it up here so you can see that's the final product. Jean-Pierre here. Thanks for coming along. If you enjoyed this video, please hit like, and if you'd like to see more videos like these, s'il vous plaît, smash that subscribe button. Also, check out the video description for items and equipment used in this project. Merci beaucoup. Claude Debussy, E-double.