Making a Pillar Saint

I've been struggling with an art project for the last few months. Last year, I started to create a series of spherical figures in many different sizes and poses, and each one taught me something new about my process. My current project, which I'm referring to as the pillar saint, has been among the most challenging.

I'd been working on this idea since late 2023, when I started doodling some of these guys in one of my sketchbooks. The idea took hold and as I started drawing more and more of them, I knew I had to pull this dream into reality. I was fortunate to have started my first ceramics sculpture class just a few months later. 

At this point, I have made 5 of these figures, and a few of them I really like.

The pillar saint has been challenging in a number of ways, but I think most of it boils down to my own changing of direction while working on it. This project has evolved considerably since I started it.

My vision is to position the spherical figure seating on top of a pillar, but the pose of the figure and the pillar have changes a few times. I've had it posed with arms in the air, arms to the side, and no arms at all. Each time I have done this, the figure has looked 'not quite right' in a way that I couldn't identify, so I would need to change something and consult my drawings. Its hard to make a three dimensional form from your imagination.

This is the second larger scale figure that I've done, and I'm using a solid build construction method. You can see in the pictures below, I am using a wooden board with a pipe for the armature. I've wrapped the pipe with newspaper and tape and thrown a bunch of clay on top of it to form the sphere. This thing is getting heavy now and the whole project probably weighs close to 20 lbs.

These are what I'm calling the 'before' pictures. I'll update this later with some after pictures, but I have since pulled all the limbs off of it. I've also done some serious resculpting of the face, too.

For the next version of this, I've decided to completely reconfigure the pose and make the limbs much heftier. I think the thinness of the arms and legs is contributing to it looking so strange, and I've worked out a few sketches of how I can position them to give it some more weight.

I still need to figure out the pillar, but I think this is a step in the right direction.