Carver or Slapper?

I’ve heard it said that, even when working with a very malleable medium such as clay, sculptors come in two types – carvers and slappers. Carvers like to start with a big pile of clay, more than they need, and carve away the excess, until the right shape is revealed. Slappers, despite the implied haphazardness of the name, build up forms more precisely over their armature by applying small bits of clay in layers until they have the shape they want. Now obviously all sculptors working in clay do a bit of both (if they cut away too much I don’t think any ‘carver’ is averse to slapping on some more material to fix the problem) and often switch styles depending on the nature of the sculpt itself, but there is still a tendency to prefer one method over the other.

After the last two session (which I’ve combined here into one entry, as the results and my mindset where almost the same for both) I’m starting to think I’m definitely a carver. Even when I try and build the form up to the exact size I want on purpose, I somehow tend to go overboard. It happened the first time around (remember “CJ The Corythosaurus”?) and it’s happening again now…

This was where I started on Friday. You can see me adding some rolled out slabs of clay to the sides of CJ’s chest to help rough in the shape.

And the view from the back, after smooshing in some very soft clay to help stabilize things and fill out his back…

Now according to my diagram and my calipers this is how wide his chest is supposed to be. But from the side he just looked too “pointy” and it wasn’t meshing well with the side view ref shot I have.

So I took my thumbs and a stick tool and started to round the shapes off as well as carving back a lot from the upper chest and neck area…

That unified the shape a bit more but it still wasn’t looking quite right. I tensed up and an annoying little voice in my head was going “Wrong! It’s Wrong!” So I had to do some mental coaching. After being away it’s taking me a little bit to get used to the feel of things again – both in terms of manipulating the clay and getting my head around what I’m trying to do. Especially my new “slow and steady” working mindset.
If I were working to a set deadline I’d already be tempted to go “well – according to the diagram & calipers this is right and I don’t have time to fix it!”

But instead I took some deep breaths and slowed myself down.

”It’s OK… Take all the time you want…Remember to enjoy the process as much as the end result. Just enjoy moving the clay if that’s what you want to do. It IS clay - you can redo it as much as you want.”

And after that little self-pep talk I DID feel better.

I gave myself the same talk when I started on this afternoon’s session. I’m still struggling with getting the shape right but I’m not stressing about it like I did on Friday – it will come.

Even the thought I was going to have to redo at least part of the head wasn’t so daunting. “You did it once, you can do it again, and this time it will be better.”

I carved back quite a lot of clay, and in fact gave up on trying to keep such a clear division between the main part of the chest, the indent where secondary arms sit, and CJ’s waist. I can add that back later. I started to get a curve I was happy with on CJ’s left side, and added a bit of clay to emphasize the chest ridge. Not sure if it’s actually in the right spot though or if it’s going to stay there for any length of time.

Actually I don’t think these pics show too much progress physically – in fact they might totally end up carved back to almost nothing again – but I think they are showing some progress “mentally”.

I’m just… exploring for now…