Creating a Portrait Bust with Expressive Content
Weeklong Workshop | Available
Instruction Medium: Clay
In this 6-day workshop we'll create a life size anatomical and expressive solid clay bust built on an armature. During the sculpting process and before the hollowing, you can consider how and in what way you could further push the narrative or content, that would be tied with the facial expression you choose to use. Content could include altering the surface to include imagery, the addition of symbolic objects, areas that have been cut away to reveal something significant and many more options. There are endless possibilities of what that might look like which we will discuss as we go.
We'll be working from handouts or from photos you bring from home. At the end, you will have a bust where the facial expression is irrevocably tied to how you've altered the bust.
Clay and armature will be provided.Additional Tools to bring:
- Clay tools:
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- Fettling knife
- Wire to cut clay
- Small ( 1/4” ) wooden modeling tool
- Small and large loop tools for hollowing
- Bamboo skewers
- Plastic and metal serrated ribs
- A kitchen fork
- Ruler or measuring tape
- Mirror
- Photos of heads or expressions you 'd like to sculpt.
* We'll be starting with a basic anatomical head which each student will transform into their own vision of an expressive portrait. Bring clear photos shot at eye level at half scale or larger using as many angles of the head as possible.
Tip Toland
Tip Toland lives in Vaughn, Washington. She received her MFA from Montana State University in 1981. Tip is a full-time studio artist and a part-time instructor in Seattle. She conducts workshops across the United States, Europe, Australia, Mexico, Taiwan, Bali and the Middle East. She is represented by Traver Gallery in Seattle, WA
Her work is in public and private collections, including: The Yellowstone Art Museum, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, Nelson Atkins Museum, The Crocker Museum, St. Petersburg Museum of Art, The Daum Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Arizona State University Ceramics Research Center, The Eleanor Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Kohler Arts Center, Portland Art Museum, Racine Art Museum, Yingee Ceramics Museum, Zanesville Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, Icheon Museum of Ceramics.