Day 17
Saaaaturday. A glorious Calgary Saturday that started with Alex poking his head around the living room corner and asking “want to go for breakfast?” You all know that I like my workshop time on Saturdays, but I decided that a good breakfast would be the perfect way to start and since I’m only on my own schedule on Saturdays it wouldn’t be a big deal if I was an hour late. We went. It was delicious. Good call Alex!
Also, it turns out that the Trouts also like to move a little slower on Saturdays, as Judd was just putting the coffee on as I arrived.
After a lengthy discussion of art and politics, I got to work making my elf-boots.
When casting, the first thing you do is sculpt a form out of clay. So that’s what I did. All day. Sculpting boots out of clay. Every time I thought I was good, Judd would wander by and explain how to fix it. And since I’m neither an experienced sculptor nor a life-figure expert, it took a long time to get the lump of clay to do what I wanted.
What I found most interesting was the assumptions my brain makes when it looks at an object. Like, say, a boot. I would look at the boot and re-create its shape. Then Judd would tell me really look at the lines and angles and I would see that the form I made is all wrong – the heel is too big, the toes are too symmetrical, the top should slope instead of round… it goes on. I’ve come back to needing to train my eye and my mind to really see the object for what it is – not what I think it is. There’s probably a philosophical lesson in that somewhere… something about truth… and assumptions… I don’t know. I was just pissed that my rubber boot (it’s just a freakin’ rubber boot!) took all day to sculpt. Here’s the result:
You can see that the one on the left is in much better shape than the one on the right. I’ll finish up the pair on Monday (I hope!) and start the next phase of the casting process.