Clay Bust Sculpture

The objective of this project was to make a bust of someone historical, not necessarily famous, but someone who was once/is still alive today. We had to make their bust using clay that had to be dried and put in the kiln. I chose to do my project on Damien Hirst. This project was really interesting because there was a wide variety of people I could have chosen from, and I think that's what I struggled with the most. I had to narrow it down to one person, so I ultimately chose the person that I thought I could create the most interesting and thought-provoking piece with.

To start the project, we first began by making our clay busts, which was definitely the hardest part. It was really difficult to get his features just right, and when I look back on it it still doesn't really look that much like him, but I'm okay with it. One difficulty that I had was that I made his face too front-heavy, so his neck was leaning a lot and just kept breaking and cracking, leaning forward and touching his chin to the table. It was also hard to cut him in half the opposite way. When making a bust, you have to cut the top of the head off to thin the inside. However, I wanted to cut mine down the middle anyways, so I just did it that way. It was really hard to do, and in the end having them apart made them a little uneven. The little shark coming out of his head was made with Sculpey, and he was painted first with watercolors, and then I went over the inside of his head with Mod-Podge mixed with food coloring to give him the formaldehyde look.

For this project, I wanted to make something a little different and strange, so that's why I decided on making my bust Damien Hirst. Some aspects of his art have always intrigued me, for example, the pieces in which he separates animals and suspends them in formaldehyde. I thought it would be funny and interesting if I were to do something similar with his bust, so I decided on splitting his head down the middle. I wasn't quite sure what to put inbetween, yet I knew that I wanted to have it be something to do with his work. So I decided on modelling it after one of his (personally) most recognizable works, which was the shark installation that he created. I split the shark in half too, as though it was coming out of his head, and decided to paint the inside of his head and the shark with the blue Mod-Podge to give it a look as though the shark was suspended in formaldehyde in his brain. I like the way it came out, especially how the negative space looks. I do think there are some things that I could add/fix, such as the layers of Mod-Podge, but I didn't have a lot of time to spare at the end of this project to wait for layers of Mod-Podge to dry, so I think the way it came out is alright.