CURSES! CJ! FOILED AGAIN!

(Oh come on – how often is it you get to say that and actually MEAN it! ;) )

And I was cursing a little bit. Whether you want to blame the holidays in general (or the nasty cold I got over said holidays) or perhaps the fact I was starting to realize I probably wasn’t going to get the sculpt for CJ done before I left for Europe (and thus dashing hopes of having some nice pics of CJ in my portfolio for when I went to the International Make-Up Artists’ Tradeshow in London at the end of my 3 week trip) I was having trouble getting myself motivated to get back into my workshop.

Around the normal post-holiday adjustments, as well as preparing for my trip, I kept to my commitment to put in at least an hour on CJ each day but despite my “slow and steady” peptalk to myself a while back, I was still getting those hare-like urges to give myself a tense deadline and rush, rush, rush.

I had to remind myself of how much sheer FUN I had been having – that despite all the challenges I WAS truly enjoying myself. In particular, I got so giddy on the day that the sculpt finally started to come together that I practically skipped from the workshop when I finally had to leave for the day.

So I consoled myself with the fact that once I got back to the sculpting stage I would in all likelihood start enjoying myself more again. Right now my progress was less obvious - I had a pile of pipes, not a Prawn – when I got to the point where I could more easily see the little Prawnling slowly emerging my natural fan-girl enthusiasm would start to return and things would snowball from there.

But back to my progress (such as it was). Yes, back to the foiling stage. I endeavoured to fill out the sculpt a little more than I did the first time (although now I also knew I had enough clay to get by). I still didn’t want to get too close to the surface – I carved into the first sculpt quite a bit at one point and I didn’t want the foil so close to the surface that I denied myself that option.

I built up the various areas with foil sausages held in place with electrical tape…

Then I would wrap everything in a layer of foil and compress it.

Then I’d take a peek at one of the armature-overlaid-with-reference-pic photos I’d printed out, then continue filling out areas as needed (as you can see mainly the back of the neck and the upper chest).