Chopin Medallion 1: Day 2,3 and 4
See part 1 here:
http://erikatakacs.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/chopin-medallion-1-day-1/
The Chopin portrait I’m using:
Today’s progress: I’m adding small lumps of clay, trying to cover the whole face, and not get caught into too much detail yet. I find the tiny bits of clay harden very fast, so I dip them in water, then put them on a sponge that soaks up the water and gives me the right consistency.
Brushing water on surfaces I’m not working on. 
I add the tiny eyeballs, but it seems like a bad idea. This is where I feel helpless. It looks bad and hopeless. Got a headache too.
Just when I want to give up, a lifesaver idea: I use the small tool on the left for detailing and a paintbrush for smoothing/refining lines. This might actually work. I remove the bad eyes for now.
This is how it looks after brushing the whole face. 
That’s it for today. I think I’ll keep using this technique, and deepen, roughen some of the lines for deeper shadows effects. Now if I could get the likeness, it would be really nice! I think his face is too round, I’ll have to elongate it around the jawlines.
DAY 3
First shot in natural light:
I can’t believe 4 hrs later there are hardly any perceivable changes. My only goal was working on likeness. I worked on his eyes for a long time, only to remove them again. I might leave them hollow. Some areas improved slightly, some got worse, but I know where to make the corrections.
Second shot in direct sunlight:
Third shot with flash:
Day 4:
Everything was going fine today until I noticed the portrait has shifted from the centre a lot . Next time I should remember to cut out the shape of the medallion after the relief is finished. The holes were not in the right place either. So I came up with a different design for the plate: 
Looking at this photo I saw more changes were needed in the area between his nose and the eyebrows and the left eye and a few others. It started to look more like the picture. I decided to add a neck instead of the piano keys that are still visible on this pic. I pondered whether I should leave the outlines around the head for decoration. I thought brought some interesting asymmetry to the round shape of the medallion. Unfortunately the lines were just too close to the edge of the plate. Instead of playing more with different outlines, I decided to remove all the clay outside the lines.
Bad, bad decision. It looked terrible. To save my hard work I decided to attach it to a new, thinner piece of clay.
Chopin’s face had already suffered due to mentioned removal. But now I had to press the face onto the clay slab to stick. He looked fatter and older. I took a tool and abused it for a while, then gave up.
This is how he looks now. Pretty botched. I don’t know if it can be saved now. I’m leaning towards starting a new one.
[...] http://erikatakacs.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/chopin-medallion-1-day-2/ Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Fresh Start 2Drying PotteryNo reason other than the mood was getting a LITTLE depressing around here.For The Environmentalist [...]
These things happen. I actually preferred the last version, the one with the shield shape scratched around the head, best of all, and was sorry you destroyed it. There was something nice about the sketchy drawing (though I know drawing in clay never looks good once it is dry). So what if the line was close to the edge of the medallion?
Good luck on the next version. Think how much you’ll know by the time you’ve done ten!