Hollowing Sculptures

Sculpting solid clay is much more fun than any other method, in my opinion. I am working with Beth Cavener Strichter's technique I talked about a few posts ago. To begin, I modeled the solid clay sculpture (first picture).

After I let it dry a bit and stiffen up, I began cutting the sculpture into pieces and hollowing them out, one at a time. After I hollowed out each piece, I reattached it to the previously hollowed piece, blending the clay thoroughly (second picture). I had to be careful not to make the sections so big that I could not get my fingers or tools inside to blend the clay on the inside wall.

The last picture shows the bottom of the hollowed out sculpture. It appears thick but that's because I left some of the base of the sculpture so that the foot would be stronger. The sculpture's walls are about half as thick as the foot implies.

Next time I will probably let the sculpture stiffen more before hollowing, since I spent a lot of time reforming the clay after joining the sections together.