June 20, 2015

There is one area of a sculpture on which Clayton always spends a lot of time: the eye.  It is not easy to sculpt an eye on an animal or human realistically.  There are a lot of muscles around and eye, and every species’ location and physique of eye is different.  It is often said that an eye reflects much of an animal’s spirit.

As he does with every sculpture, Clayton made sure that he portrayed the eye of the life size buffalo, Bison bison, as he saw it on the live model.

June 14, 2015

Bison bison A quick recap from our May e-News (Want to subscribe? Send your email on Contact Us tab):

Clayton was commissioned to create a life size reclining buffalo sculpture for the Children’s Garden at Penn State Arboretum.  The donor for this sculpture saw Clayton’s life size Miss Gratz at the Brandywine River Museum, and specified Clayton as the sculptor.

When an artist works from life as Clayton does, sculpting a bison begins with first finding a live model.  Although a neighbor raises buffalo, the issue of proximity still existed.   According to Bill, the owner, he couldn’t approach on foot.  The closest he could get to them was about 25 feet, when he drove his ATV out to the herd to feed them. Clayton went to visit the herd and he and Bill agreed on a plan

Clayton prepared an armature and waited until a buffalo was sent to market, when he had an opportunity for close examination.*  Clayton followed his normal practice in making a life size piece: he started by sculpting a small study called a maquette.  The small size of a maquette allows a sculptor to work out compositional details in an easily changed format before embarking on the life-size version where changes are possible but more time consuming. The foundry laser scans the maquette and then uses a computer controlled router to carve a Styrofoam® enlargement.

However, as is often the case what is an imperceptible discrepancy in a table size version, can become an obvious error when enlarged 9.5 times.

Thus the first photo below shows Clayton scraping off styrofoam from the enlargement so he can add clay onto the armature and sculpt according to dimensions he had previously taken.  The second photo shows Clayton (who has taken over garage space to make loading and unloading easy) with the life size piece in progress.

*Already in place is the head and two of the legs, sculpted when Clayton had the opportunity with the bison this winter.  Probably obvious from this description, sculpting a life size piece is a lengthy process, which requires a lot of patience and willingness to go back and make adjustments where necessary.

As Clayton moves ahead, further descriptions will follow.adjusting life size armatureClayton with Bison bison in prorgress