Create > Abstract Portrait

Create > Abstract Portrait

Goal:  Create a reduction sculpture that is an abstract portrait

Catalysts:  Subtract, abstract, symbolize

Studio Activity:

Create a portrait of a meaningful person.  Consider two elements: 1) An object which symbolizes the person’s interest or hobby, and 2) The image of the person.  Fuse the two elements to produce an abstracted symbolic sculpture.  

1. Start by making sketches of the human form.  
2. Research and view other sculptor’s work for examples of ways to represent the human form in a freestanding sculpture.  
3. Make a plaster mound.  
4. Make more preliminary sculptures each abstracting your human form.  
5. Start carving your  abstracted human form out of your plaster mound.

Artist Profile:

Be inspired by Barbara Hepworth > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth was an English sculptor exemplifying Modernism.  Barbara created abstractions that investigated ‘absence’ in sculpture as much as ‘presence’ and the deep considerations of the relationship of her sculptural forms to the larger spaces surrounding it.  Her sculpture forms tend to possess clean lines of modernist aesthetics that she complicated with different textures and tactile sensations.  Her works grew out ideas connecting the human figure with aspects of nature - “All my sculptures come out of landscape”    

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-hepworth-barbara-artworks.htm#pnt_3

Artist Profile:

Be inspired by Henry Moore > https://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-moore Henry Moore was an English sculptor that explored the theme of mothers and children - inspired by the birth of a daughter.  He is best known for his abstract human figures made of bronze.  Moore’s works are suggestive of reclining figures and female forms.  The sculptures make use of negative space or hollow spaces to depict aspects of solid form.  The undulating form of his reclining figures switch in the mind between human-like forms to landscapes of rolling hills and back again.