Sculpting a Female Portrait in Clay | Part 1

[New Masters Academy]

World-renowned sculptor Johanna Schwaiger joins New Masters Academy, bringing with her over 20 years experience of teaching and producing figurative and portrait sculpture. In her first series, she demonstrates her method of sculpting a female portrait from a live model. You’ll learn important methods and procedures using various sculpting materials and tools, key landmarks of the skull, and basic clay application.

Materials

• Water-Based Clay
• 2″ x 2″ Plank
• 3/4″ Thick Plywood or Melamine Square
• Screws
• Wood Modeling Tools
• Tiranti Modeling Tools (B Series)
• Caliper
• Wire Clay Cutting Tool

[DonnaRodgers]

This is a fantastic tutorial Johanna! I’m working on a portrait now. Thank you!  Love that you start with the skull and build out.

[Isabelle Lambert]

This is such a fantastic course with this great artist!  Unfortunatelly, I don’t have a model available.  Is there any way or info I could get to be able to do such a project from  pictures (for exemple if a take many pic from different angles of a model) or if I film a 360 degrees tour of the muse?  I have not seen any info on this course on discord… is there a forum where I could ask questions?

Thank you!

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Isabelle
It is better to work from a model because your bifocal vison allows your brain to interpret form. However, we do have some great resources that you can use if a model is not an option.

Head turnarounds are here:
https://www.nma.art/images/search/types/head-turnarounds/

We also have several 3D models that may help
Here are a few:
https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/the-nma-anatomy-head/
https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/the-planes-of-the-head/
https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/death-mask-scan/
https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/asaros-planes-of-the-head/
https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/portrait-of-a-young-woman-sibyl-scan/

We plan on adding High quality head scans in the near future 🙂

Also, you may find this course and its references useful
https://www.nma.art/courses/drawing-in-space/

[Isabelle Lambert]

Thank you Daniel for your answer. I see I have to upgrade my subsciption in order to see the images.  Is there a forum about sculpture on Discord?  I haven’t seen any..

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Isabelle, not yet, but there are sculptors there, the best way to find them is to post. You can post in the most relevant channel.  If you click a users name you can see there discord roles. Sculptors have the easer island stone head emoji
Our founder, Joshua, is also a sculptor and is pretty active there.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Daniel Daigle.

[Isabelle Lambert]

Ok thank you Daniel!  Went on Discord but I am still trying figure out how it works lol! So far I managed to see the live chat for Mondays master so it is a start! I just upgrade my suscription and I will have a look at the reference you gave me!.. Thanks again for the support!

[Daniel Daigle]

No problem, if you need any general guidance in adapting to discord, look for the #discord-support channel  under !Help Desk & Feedback
or tag @nmamod and we will help

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