I hope these INSET notes will give art teachers inexperienced in sculpture the courage to offer their pupils the rewarding experience of “Making a Ceramic Head”. If possible, it would be good if teachers tried making a head themselves first, alone or by booking INSET training with myself ( Beatrice Hoffman at “Sculpture Workshops Oxford” ).

Even though sculpting a head is a challenging project, it is also a very motivating one. Much of our brains are geared towards reading and recognising faces – there is a even a whole area of the brain just devoted to that, the “Fusiform Gyrus”. The moment pupils start recognising a human face in their creation, many will be hooked. They will often represent themselves ( including their hair style); or their ideal person of the other gender.

If cost of clay, lack of time or storage of sculptures poses a problem towards making a life size head, a half or three quarter sized head is another option. It has the bonus of being quicker to build up, with less sagging and gravitational problems (however worthwhile it is to learn about them) ; but the downside is a greater need for fine motor skills, especially when it comes to representing eyes and mouth.

I refer to learning objectives covered by this workshop at the end of these notes.

Clay used
Is a grogged high-firing stoneware clay; the best (and expensive) I clay I use is called “(pink) crank craft” from Potclays ; a bag of 12,5 kg should be enough for 2 students.

The coiled hand-built sculpting method
A fast method to create a ceramic head: no expensive armature needed, or laborious detaching of the sculpture from the armature after completion. The process is similar to building up a rather irregularly shaped pot. The coils used don’t have to be smoothed by rolling them out – and should be around 2cm thick.

Balance and strength of the ceramic head:
However, it means one needs to think and work initially like a “builder “ or “engineer”, rather than an “artist”: develop sensitivity to and understanding of how clay operates, and become aware of issues like its flexibility or hardness, and the weight, balance and stability of the sculpture.

Apply the “wrigle test”:
Gently shake parts of the sculpture to assess its stability; work out whether your sculpture is fragile before the event of collapse. If the sculpture is not stable, support it with the help of external ( bottles, lids etc…) or internal supports (barbecue sticks). Alternatively, change its angle, by adding a clay wedge to its base.

Build up the sculpture from pre-hardened clay to prevent sagging:
The day before the workshop open the bags of clay and pull down them down, cut the blocks of clay into 3cm thick slices with a cutting wire, and leave them to dry overnight in their bag to make the clay more firm ( but not too hard). This will hopefully prevent the sagging of the sculpture.

Hardening the sculpture for greater stability:
Not using an internal armature to support the sculpture, it is the hardened clay itself that holds up the head. Unless you use a blow heater to dry the sculpture, only add a maximum height of clay of 12 cm at a time to prevent sagging. Then leave it to dry to “leather hard” clay (1-2 days depending on the heat in the room), before wrapping it up in a plastic bag. So this accounts for three sessions in which to build up the head: neck to nostrils; nostrils to eyebrows; and filling in the head and shaping the hair.

Assessing the thickness of the clay in the sculpture:
Thicken the sculpture on the inside surface of the head, when you discover patches of clay that are too thin. Small areas of thin clay can weaken the whole sculpture and hasten sagging or collapse. You can work out the thickness of the clay by touching with one hand the outside of it, and with the other hand the inside of it. Or hold thumb and index finger of one hand around both sides of the clay surface. Try not not thicken the sculpture (4cm or more) too much, to prevent explosion in the kiln firing. However, if you don’t get round to thinning it, there is always another chance when you hollow the sculpture at the end of the sculpting process. Some thickening happens inadvertently through the sculpture sagging in its early wet stage : always check the base ( neck) of the sculpture at the end, and hollow it if it is too thick.

Bonding: Adding parts
When adding new parts to your head – like nose hair, teeth – never perfectly shape them beforehand. Instead, just take a rough bit of clay, bond it onto the head, and only then shape it. The reason for this is twofold: • one looses a third of the shape while adding it to the main clay body; • one can judge the proportion and form better when the bit of clay is attached to the sculpture, and seen in relation to the whole work.

Handling Clay: keep it thick enough
When building up the head, students have to be careful not to “pinch” or “claw” the clay – but instead stroke it with a flattened hand, or use a tool instead. Pinching leads to clay surfaces becoming too thin, and thin clay weakens the sculpture and makes it fragile or likely to sag.

Position the sculpture at eye-level:
For most of the time you might need to raise the sculpture with the help of several tins covered with boards, depending on your height; or lower your chair.

Lots of light:
Offer as much daylight or artificial lighting as is possible. Seeing the angle and curvature of surfaces takes better eyesight compared to painting or drawing.

Smoothing and modelling the surfaces:
Using a kidney tool to “comb” over the entire surface, smooth the sculpture intermittently, filling in hollows, and cutting away protrusions. I call this idiosyncratically “Making the moon into a balloon”: “Craters will need to be filled in, mountains removed”. This instruction sounds so strange, that hopefully students will remember it.
Smooth surfaces will help assess the form, and see the outline more clearly; this feedback to the creator in turn helps make decisions of what needs improving.
As the clay hardens, one can refine it by smoothing it with a small amount of water on one’s hands. This softens the clay ( especially if scored before) and makes it more responsive to the fingers. It connect the various small areas of the sculpture, so it appears more cohesive. Don’t use too much water, otherwise the clay will be washed away, with only the grog remaining and creating a very rough surface when fired.
This smoothness can be reinforced through “burnishing” at a later stage of the process, with a hard metal tool or pebble, which pushes the grog into the clay.

However, never add water to the sculpture while it is still wet: This would lead to the sculpture sagging. Especially water collecting around the base weakens the base, and thus the stability of the sculpture.

Wrapping up the sculpture ready for the next session:
Use two plastic bags, one over the top of the sculpture, one from the bottom/base up of the sculpture. This prevents drying over the week from the small air gap between the base of sculpture and the shelf it is positioned on. If the sculpture is quite dry, spray it all over before wrapping it.

To allow for the clay to dry and harden, build up the sculpture in three parts over three separate sessions.
Once you built up the head up to eye brow level or top of the head: locate and initially only roughly sculpt various features, as their location might still change in relation to each other .
Refine features gradually, making sure that you move between them, rather then just focus on one.
This enables you to never lose track of the whole of the face, and adjust proportions and location of various features. Take time away from sculpting, for looking and assessing
• Step away
• Use the turntable for various views

“Significant Features”:
Allows you to recognise the head more easily, which in turn helps fill in more details. Facial features don’t just include the distinct ones of mouth nose eyes and ears. The harder ones to represent are the “rest of the face” and it various ‘hills” : chin, jaw, cheeks, philtrum, forehead, shaped by and revealing the bone structure beneath them.
Hair style is probably most characteristic for recognising a face, and may account for 50% of the impression it makes, including the gender. It pays to model the hair early on, once the head is closed, for pupils to identify better with it, and thus engage more and gain in confidence.

To describe the circumference of the neck, you need to make a first coil of clay (1) , about 2,5cm thick, by “strangling” a lump of clay with both hands; lay it down on there board, in a circle like a bagel. Don’t work directly on the turntable, otherwise it sticks to it and is hard to take off.
If the coil is too thin, squash or squeeze it together between both hands; or add more clay to it.
At this early stage, the neck does not need to be the “correct” size: more clay can be added, or taken away, as this is a very flexible approach that keeps changing as the size and proportions of the head become more apparent.
For the neck, 2 – 3 coils will have to be laid on top of each other (1b)) and bonded.

Joining the clay coils (2/3) is crucial, both outside, and inside the neck/head; it has to be done after every coil and cannot be saved up till later. This would be structurally unsound, and lay the foundation for future “weak points”, that will bring about the collapse of the sculpture.
One can join one coil with the next by stroking downwards with four fingers, the thumb, or a tool; turning the turntable while joining can speed up the process.
A common mistaken view by students is to believe that just squashing/pressing the clay parts together will join them sufficiently. It only appears to work while the clay is wet; once it dries, the parts detach from each other. It is good for the teacher to to demonstrate the bonding process.
It is worth remembering that the neck is not straight: it is a steep diagonal leading forwards from the torso.

To bring out the chin from the frontal neck, the fourth coil needs to stick out (4) at one end of the bagel; if it is a life-size head, it needs to be lengthened to about three finger’s width (5 cm) , the same length one measures on one’s own head.
Because this is a pivotal point where sculptures often collapse later on, add extra clay and bond well (5) where the chin meets the neck; position a plastic support holding up the chin(6), and the ensuing head that will be built upon it.
The support can be taken away in the third session , when the weight on the back head will balance with the front; and the clay will have hardened and become self supporting.
The coils don’t widen yet at the back of the head: the chin starts at the level of the back-neck; the back head (=cranium) however only starts curving out at the level of the nostrils.

A chin stretching out too far is often responsible either for the head falling forward later on, or breaking off the neck and sinking onto the table around it.
If that happens, you can
• widen the neck-base
• or change the angle of the head, by lifting up the front, and stuff a harder clay “wedge”underneath it
• or squeeze the whole head between both arms in order to lessen its bulk and weight.

If the head is breaking off the neck, or the neck is sinking into the head, you can
• shorten the chin,
• and push back the whole face towards the neck.
• lift the chin up with one hand and stabilise with a support;
• and with the other hand repair the joint on the inside between neck and chin.

The first three coils upwards from the chin take you to the start of the nose. Before adding mouth and nostrils it is worth just establishing the facial plane.Two things can be observed:
• It is curved (9) and not flat – including all the facial features of mouth eyes forehead and cheeks; that is why we can see the face in its profile view.
• The face is not only forwards from the neck, but also wider,

So to widen the face,
• pull out and stretch the clay from inside the “coil-pot”, using the whole of your hands or even arms; thicken the clay to 2cm if needed
• Or squeeze together the neck to slim it.
• The facial plane is still bland – with no mouth, nose or eyes – or bone structure; but you can locate and drawn on the clay features such as the lips and nostrils.
• At this stage you determine the size of the future head, by establishing the first proportions: width of neck in relation to width of face.
• If you want the head to be life-size, measure a ( or your?) real life face with a pair of “callipers” or simply your fingers.

The first facial feature to establish is the jaw line, in distinction to the back-neck and cranium. From the profile view, I draw a line from the chin, horizontally along the jaw and then up to the ears , ( at this stage, just two simple, oval flat slabs of clay).
Compare the width of the back-neck with the width of the jaws, seen in profile. Beware, the relationship (proportion) between them varies. A slender swan-like female neck has different proportions than a muscly gym-going young man.
Once I commit to the jaw line , I press in behind the line (8) , so that the neck recedes behind the jawbone: the neck is slimmer and narrower than the face.
If I got the proportion of jaw to neck wrong, it can be easily adjusted by adding clay to the face or carving it away.

Mark the location(7) of lower and upper lips and nose. Add an extra oval-shaped lump of clay ( a ”moustache”) between nose and mouth, to account for the “facial hill” into which the philtrum is pressed , and the round plane which forms the upper lip.
The lower edge of this lump can be shaped to already form the lower edge of the upper lip. The lower lip is added underneath this as a thin coil of clay (10).
The lips are wider in the middle, and thinner at the edge. This contrast is more marked in women.
The challenge with representing lips – and the most common mistakes – are the following:
• The IN-Line separating upper and lower lip is not straight, and uneven, moving around the “lumps “ of the upper and lower lip (10).
• Remember to give the lips enough volume, or roundness; you can “load” a smaller tool with extra clay and to apply to the middle the lips.
• Avoid shaping the lips though pinching, therefore creating thin and sticking out ”Donald Duck beak/lips”.
• The lips are “embedded” in the face – at the top with the “philtrum hill” between nose and lips; underneath by the fatty tissues beneath and on both sides of the lower lips.
• Even though the lips stick out in the middle, they merge back into the face at their sides the corners of the lips: be aware of the small fold either side of the lips.

With the jaw clearly dividing front-face from the back-neck and head, we become aware of the next step: the area of the nostrils indicating the beginning of the curving out cranium at the back. Draw a line from the front to the back to locate its beginning. Bend three coils outwards to build up the cranium.
Locate the ears, at the top of the jawline, dividing face from back-head.

Are a “significant feature” that helps work out proportions in the face. They are:
• positioned at the end of the jawline;
• separating cheeks and face from the slimmer neck
• and seen from both front and back of the head;
• aligned with the nose – nostrils at the bottom, and eye brows at the top.

Initially, simply add an oval flat piece of clay at the top of the jaw, and angle it steeply backwards towards the cranium.
The gap between ear and head should just be minimal, just enough to position glasses on top of the slim bit attaching the ears to the head.
Make sure the ears start and end at the same level by taking a straight horizontal symmetry line from one to the other, on the face and on the cranium.
Make sure the cheeks are equal width; and at the back of the head equal distance to the middle one of the cranium

Once you reach the nostrils and the clay has hardened sufficiently, build up with 2-3 coils to the level of the eye brows or mid forehead. It is worth remaining at this level for a while. You can see enough of the face to refine it, even if the top head and forehead is not yet done; and you still can reach inside the head to add or take away clay.
The basic shape of the nose is a diagonal triangle, with the nostrils being its wide base, and the nose tip being furthest away from the cheeks, and the nose bridge being the thinnest part of the nose, closest to the face.
The nose bridge dips slightly in from the forehead. The sides of the nostrils are lower in the face than the middle septum (= thin skin between the two nostrils).

Common problem areas:
• the whole nose sticks out of the face too much, is not embedded enough in the face;
• or the nose is too shallow.
• The angle of the nose is too horizontal (“Pinocchio nose”) and not diagonal
• it is not positioned in the middle of the face (—-> “symmetry” work)
• the nostrils should not be round, but oval and diagonally angled down from the nose tip (septum= the bit between the nostrils, that touches the philtrum). • there is a flab of skin connecting the nose with the cheeks, half way down the nose, with a wider angle compared to the nose bridge.

• The sides of the nostrils are lower in the face than the middle septum (= thin skin between the two nostrils) and the nose tip.
• The nostrils are dug out with the fingers or wire tool;
• they are NOT round as presumed, but instead a longish oval curve, shaped by the small “Philtrum-hill” between mouth and nose.
• Half of the nostrils are sticking out of the face, towards the tip of the nose; the other half is following the diagonal ‘hill’ of the philtrum
• Look from the top view to see the transition from nose tip sticking out, then dipping in, and then out again for the nostril;
• Look at the transition from nostril to “septum” ( = the thin bit of skin separating the two nostrils, beside the nostril).

The cheek bones  can be located underneath the outside of the eyes, and extend diagonally down to the sides of the mouth, and up past the eyes and onto the temple. To shape these raised areas, I push the clay out from the inside of the head; or/and I add clay with a tool.

As the nose-bridge reaches the forehead-bone, I use my thumb to dig in at either side of the nose for the eye-sockets; the eyes are enclosed between nose, cheek and forehead bones. On the outside and above the eyes, there is a rounded fat cushion hanging down from the eyebrow bone.

It is important to create both eyes at the same level, equal distant to the nose, and to an equal depth beside the nose bridge. They are set deepest immediately beside the nose (deeper and more pronounced in men), and much more shallow on the outside.
To start with, I mark and measure the location of the eye; then draw the eyes onto the clay.
Using my tool, I create an oval volume for the eye balls, so they protrude and become visible from the profile view: I dig/press deeper into the clay in both corners of the eyes, and less so all around; this is how the lids emerge, lying on top of the eye balls.I add a small amount of clay in the centre, to increase the protruding roundness of the eyeball.
I build up the lids with small coils, only in the middle. The lower eye lid is set deeper in the face, compared to the upper one.

The lids can be created with either both of two methods :
• the oval clay shape for the eyeball gets pressed-in around the edges, leaving behind the raised eye lids;
• the lids are added as a coil

The lids are more distinct on the inside of the eyes; outside, they get subsumed by the fatty area above them on the outside of the face.
The upper and lower lids don’t form a regular and symmetric oval shape; they vary individually, by gender and by race. The tear duct is pronounced.
Male eyes are much closer to the eyebrows, and deeper set, compared to female eye.
The relationship of nose bridge to eye – the depth or shallowness of the eye – varies between races.

Common problem areas all relate to placing the eyes correctly:
• The eyes are on a straight rather than curved plane, and thus not visible from the profile
• the eye is too deep, or too shallow, compared to the nose bridge.
• One eye is higher or lower than the other. Use a short horizontal symmetry line across the bridge of the nose to make sure the eyes are on the same level.
• One eye is wider or bigger than another
• The eye is too close or too far from the nose bridge

Solutions:
• Position the head beneath your eyes, and check the view from the top, down the forehead: are the eyes for symmetric? are they in the same location, depth and plane either side of the nose ?
• Are they locked correctly into the “hills” of forehead and cheekbone?
• check the profile view: does the eye ball protrude, are the lids curved?

• Add increasingly narrower coils, that you lay on the inner side of the head, till there is only a teapot-lid sized hole left.
• Close this with a clay shape slightly bigger than the opening;
• Stroke it gently side-wards for joining.
• Don’t apply any pressure downwards: the lid might fall in; or gravity might misshape the head.

The volume of the cranium is best understood from the profile view. The cranium is often larger than expected, and with a greater width. Or described differently: the face is slimmer than expected, and a smaller part of the whole head than one thinks.
Look out for the overall line from left to right: starting with the back neck, up to the crown, and back down the face, past the forehead, nose, mouth, chin and neck.
The back head needs to be given similar importance and attention compared to the face. The face is the detailed, intricate and “busy” part of the head. The back head is the simple, abstract beautiful surface and form.

Hair is created as a total volume, built from a slab of clay; sometimes even leaving a hollow between slab and cranium, to avoid too much clay thickness. Hair is not created by assembling individual thin hair strands/coils.
Texture is applied to the volume only later on. Hair stands out from the skin – a thickness from as little as 2 mmm, up to 10 cm for a quiff.

• Lay the head on its side on a cushion; score and dampen the underside of the base in readiness to be expanded by adding more clay.
• Add one or several coils of a similar circumference.
• Shape them into the conventional abstracted base of portraits.

Most of the time, you should look “eye to eye” with your head. More rarely however, you could pick a different view, to refresh your eye:
• Looking from the top down at the head, by standing on a chair, or lowering the head. You can see the curvature of the forehead, cheeks, nose, philtrum, mouth and chin;
• or looking flat down onto the face, which is lying on a cushion: you will become more aware of the volumes, ( the “hills” in the face) and especially the symmetry.

Working from profile views will allow the head to grow in depth and into the third dimension, rather than remain a flat and frontal image. This often feels counter-intuitive to pupils accustomed to 2D art; they should spend half their time sculpting “from the side”.
The face can become a kind of mountain range. Forehead, nose, lips and chin are sticking out, with deep (river) valleys in-between: eye – sockets, the lines around the mouth, and above the chin.

Because of the 3D nature of sculpture, there are 180 outlines on either side of the head, with some more important than others.

Frontal outline:
• check for the central position of nose and mouth,
• the equal sized cheeks on either side
• the right and left outlines, and their symmetry Every volume, seen from a 45 degree angle, creates an outline.

It is easier to refine an outline, compared to improving the volume of clay, which is harder to see. So work on the outline (= profile line) rather than frontally.
FOR EXAMPLE: Look from one cheek to the other, across the nose, and try and match the vertical, irregular line you see, down from the forehead, over eyebrow, temple, cheekbone and finally to the chin.

To attain symmetry in the face, draw a vertical line down the forehead, nose-bridge, middle of the mouth and chin, and compare the two halves. To really engage with one half only, cover up the other one with a cloth or paper.
Copy over the better aspects from one half of the face to the other.
Repeat the process drawing on horizontal lines across the face: are the eyes, eye brows, eye lids, nostrils on the same level?
Are the ears the same size and on the same level? To achieve over-all symmetry, the same vertical line on the face can be used repeatedly, and also on the back head.

I teach very basic proportions to guide the sculpting process. The face is divided into three thirds:
• chin to underneath the nose,
• nose to eyebrows ,
• and the remaining forehead; The facial thirds are only an approximation. Depending on the head, they can shrink to one quarter, or grow to half a face. Other landmarks:
• Nose length-wise and mouth are slightly wider than the eyes; • corner of the mouth meets with the vertical line from the mid-eye.
• The nostrils are slimmer than the width of the eye.

You need to give enough attention to detail ( facial features, bone-structure, hair) and refine them, in order to “recognise” the head, and thus respond better to the sculpture.
On the other hand, you want to leave the exact location of various parts slightly open-ended and undefined till later; therefore you should not commit too much work to a facial feature early on.
The reason being: it might be in the wrong location, and you have to repeat the work all over again.
This is especially true for making the eye, as finding its location is so complex. Slight changes, like positioning it more right, left, higher, lower, deeper or more shallow – each minimal adjustments have a huge impact. I often withhold making the eyes and their lids till quite late.

You should constantly vacillate between working close up to the sculpture on a detail, and stepping back (pushing your chair back), to see the whole sculpture, assess how that detail fits in with the other parts.
Each feature is part of its surrounding region, and cannot be sculpted separately from it. The region around the mouth encompasses the philtrum and folds coming down from the nostrils, the dip below the lips, the corners of the mouth with its folds, and the chin.
The region around the nose encompasses the forehead, and the strips of flesh coming down to both into the cheeks, joining up with the eye-bags.
The region around the eyes encompasses the eye –brows, the flesh between eye-brow-bone and eyelid, the eye-bags, and the cheekbone below its outer sides.
Later on, you work on the transitions between different regions, till all ‘boundaries’ disappear and the head becomes cohesive and whole.

Rather than being premeditated, style should emerges ‘naturally’ as you struggle with representing the head realistically. ”Style” is paradoxically enhanced by grappling with and copying reality initially.
So distortions and inventions should emerge only in the second half of the workshop. It is crucial to respond to the head in front of oneself, and take the cue from there, rather than act on preconceived intentions of trying to be “original”.
For a stylised, simplified head, one might look towards African carved heads, and European artists inspired by them, for instance Brancusi. Planes, volumes and angles become clearer and more pronounced, proportions might be changed or exaggerated.
On the other hand , sometimes a certain expression appears on its own accord in the sculpture; if you like that expression and want ‘to go along with it’, it is worth researching more about it, to understand it better (looking at at book about expression and facial muscles). Look up the YouTube by Farraut on facial expressions.
At a later stage it is a good idea to research the many artistic interpretations of heads, by other artists and cultures.

Psychological processes:
Early anxieties, “key-features” and “recognition”.

In the early stages of “Making a Head” the students are often tense, and finding it hard to get involved and “believe” in the project and themselves. After all, it seems a long way from a few coils to a head one can identify with. Early on, the process is still domineered by practical issues of coils, weight and balance, and it is harder to yet feel engaged.
As the facial features are refined, and especially as the eyes start to “look back” at their creator, a dialogue develops. The sculpture takes on ”a life of its own”, takes the lead and gives guidance and courage. There is less to worry about future achievement, and more enjoyment and involvement in the present moment. Self-doubt fades away, eat least in its destructive or inhaling form.
When certain key features emerge on the sculpture – lips, an eye, or a hair-style, students ‘recognise’ a head, and this feedback from the sculpture helps respond and make decisions. Students discover that they know so much more about heads than they expected. When it comes to faces, we are all experienced experts. The head is the first shape we discover in our lives, and are attracted to as babies. It remains something we see and focus on constantly, in the mirror and in others we meet and relate to. There is even a whole area of the brain just devoted to facial recognition, the “Fusiform Gyrus”.
”Making a Head” draws on these half-conscious memories and impressions, and develops and activates them into firm knowledge.
One rightly speaks in this context of a creative process: through the sculpture, one makes contact with something within that one is ordinarily unaware of. Because it is unconscious, one feels “taken over” by some unknown force, or tugged along by a gentle pull – sleepwalking with confidence, in a trance of deep, sometimes compulsive concentration. Fear of mistakes gives way to a “state of flow”, in a constant process of transforming and improving the head.
As a teacher and facilitator, it it my job to create an atmosphere conducive to this kind of creative dialogue, even within a busy classroom. Pupils often form an intense attachment to their work, as it might represent themselves or their “ideal partner”, and confirm their identity.
In the anxious early stages of the workshop, it is important to prevent teasing and negative commenting by pupils. Once things work well, the classroom paradoxically has a social atmosphere in which everyone feels safe and relaxed enough to be alone, involved with their work and able to engage and concentrate.

Check that the neck has not become too thick through the initial sagging process; Hollow it to 3cm thickness if necessary. Mark with initials pupil’s names . Dry thoroughly, till very light colour. Fire slowly at
• C80/h up to C560;
• after that C120/h up to C1000 (biscuit firing ) or C1250 maximum (vitrified, ie frost resistant).

Understanding of clay:
Its response towards weight and balance; different consistencies of wetness or dryness, how and when to use them.

Technical Ceramic skills:
• Knowledge of tools and their particular use and effect on the sculpture
• applying fine motor skills;
• hand-eye coordination;
• Bonding, coiling, modelling & carving

Looking skills:
• Training the eye to see afresh;
• zooming in onto parts, and out onto the whole of the sculpture;
• using many viewpoints

Observational skills :
• Precise observation of planes and outlines,
• ability to match and copy
• Transferring information from 2D images onto 3D

Understanding of form:
Shaping smooth planes and curvature

Understanding of proportions:
The relationship of variously sized parts to each other

Creativity
• Play, enjoyment and involvement
• Lessening the fear of “failure”; using mistakes constructively;
• Experimenting, testing and trying various options on the sculpture; inventiveness,
• being at ease with uncertainty
• Trusting the process and “going with the flow”

Uldis Zarins: “Form of the Head and Neck” & Anatomy of facial Expression”

Phillippe Farrault:”Portrait sculpting Anatomy and expression in Clay” & ”Mastering Portraiture”

Peter Rubino: ”The portrait in Clay”

Grubbs: ”Modelling a likeness in Clay”

Irvine: “Ceramic sculpture: Making faces”

Hildre: ”Modelling Heads and Faces in clay”