Assignment: Animal Self-Portrait Project

Student Written Reflection (As Part of an ACE 7 Requirement):

“For my project, I did a bust sculpture of Hercules with a lion skin. I really enjoy classical art, so I wanted to try to do something that looked like a marble statue. There have been marble statues made of Hercules with a lion skin in full-body form, so I wanted to mimic these into just the shoulders up. I did coil building of the basic shape of the body then wacked it into a more detailed shape. For the head, I also did coil building, but I did the head separately and propped it on a large bottle so it would not flatten the bottom and so it would be more of eye level for me to work on. I started with a flat face shape and added on the features. For the eyes, I made large eye sockets and added spheres before building the "skin" around them. The lion skin was just pieces of slabs that I would attach together. I would then add extra clay to make the details and lion's face. The mane was made by attaching a lot of little basic pieces of clay then carving into them to add texture. I wanted to do a matte white color to represent how marble looks, so I kept it as simply white terra sig; I figured that using majolica would make it look too shiny and glassy.”

-Maddie D.