Sculpting with Real Clay Écorché

I sculpted this over the course of a couple of months with the help of Daniel Burt, an amazing instructor at the Academy of Art University. I did have experience with real-life sculpting before. Most of the time, however, I am digitally sculpting in ZBrush, but I think every sculptor should give themselves the time to work with real clay. The clay that I used for this project was Chavant Roma Plastilina. If I am honest, the clay did tend to smell a bit, especially under the hot weather in Mexico. Of course, I tried to keep it in my studio where it is cool, but one can only do so much with the limited space available.

The sculpting was easy and smooth with this clay. I’ve heard this a lot from other digital sculptors, but it rings true to me as well: you get accustomed to the luxuries of working digitally. Luxuries such as symmetrical sculpting, undoing mistakes, easy modification of proportions, subtools, etc. Taking away these luxuries, it’s not hard to understand why sculpting can be such a time-demanding process. It’s an artform that builds on top of your initial foundation; if your foundation is rocky, the sculpt will be harder to steer in the right direction.

I am very happy with my écorché model. Like every artist, I only see the areas that could be improved upon, but given the timeframe, I feel I did as good a job as I could and am proud of everything I learned, with a deeper appreciation for this artform.