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miss-m-winks · 1 year

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Love is an Art, part 5

master post, part 4, part 6

Previously: Kouto and Talib met up for their first bonus session. Now it’s time for class again! Just a short chapter.

Talib walked down the path to the pottery studio, glancing up at the cloudy patchwork over the blue sky. Ahead of him, a few other students were also headed to the studio. One was slender and dark-haired, wearing a tight sleek bun and a shirt that looked far too fine for the mess of damp clay.

“Kouto?” They paused and turned, smiling. “Oh, hi Talib! Your eye is green today, I like that.” They waited for him to catch up so they could walk together. “I don’t think I’ll have much to do today, since you’re all just doing a critique, but professor Rutfang said she might want me to pose again to help with the critique.” Talib nodded.

“Yeah. I’m a little nervous,” he admitted. “I kinda miss just doing wheel pottery. Or wood carving, that’s fun. Maybe next quarter I’ll try a wood carving class.” Kouto hummed, opening the pottery studio door ahead of Talib.

“We should try to hang out some time,,” they said. “I’d like to see your other work. I could show you my art too.”

“That would be nice.” Talib set his bag on the shelf, and Kouto waved at him before they slipped into the storage closet to change into their bathrobe once more. Professor Rutfang nodded at the students on their way in.

“Alright, get your sculptures and sit down. You made your first messy figure sculptures last class, you had time to step away and give them a rest, and now we’re going to look at them again.” She stood to the side of the platform in the middle of the tables, arms folded as she waited. Talib pulled out his tools and claimed a spot at the tables, then brought his sculpture off the shelf. Gilik came over soon after, sitting beside him again with a friendly smile.

“Nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm, me too.” Gilik giggles. “But I’m also excited. After today, we’ll get the really big project.” Talib nodded. The first sculpture got everyone used to the idea of making a person out of clay. But the rest of the quarter was supposed to be focused on making one good sculpture as a final project, and lots of smaller quick sculptures in between.

When the students were all settled in, professor Rutfang spoke up again.

“So, as I explained at the start of the quarter, once you had experience with general sculpting techniques, you’d get to work with a model. And now that you’ve all made your first live figure sculpture, we’re going to do a critique, discuss some methods for sculpting faster and more accurately, and introduce the big assignment I expect you to finish by the end of the quarter.” She looked around at the class and nodded. “Peer critique first. Go ahead and work with your table partner to look over your sculptures, talk about them for the next fifteen minutes.” She waved her hand and sat down at the edge of the platform.

“Well, here’s mine.” Gilik removed the waxed bark cloth from her sculpture. The clay looked rather smooth, all pressed into place by her naturally damp amphibian fingers. “I did come in during open studio to fix the seams,” she explained. “I’m actually kind of happy with it. The bent leg might be a little off, and the head is wonky. But I like the rest.” Talib nodded, looking over her work. The head was wonky, entirely asymmetrical. It tilted towards one shoulder.

“I like the wonky look. Adds character.” Talib smiled at Gilik. She snorted.

“Fine, but this is a critique. Assuming I want to get better at making more symmetrical heads, what’s your advice?” Talib hummed, leaning over to see the sculpture from a new angle. “It looks rushed. Which, you know, makes sense. I think you got the body shape down pretty well. The head is tilting prety hard to the right. I think if you spent more time correcting it from every angle, you could fix that.” Gilik nodded, turning the sculpture around. “You’re right, I didn’t do a proper turn around for the head. What do you think of this leg though?”

“It looks like the clay might have sagged there. I made that leg by carving it out instead of building it up.” Talib removed the cloth on his sculpture to show it to Gilik. “I thought mine was a little off too, but if I look at yours next to mine, I think I can see where the clay might have sagged on yours where in my case it’s just that I carved it weird.” Gilik leaned closer to his work.

“Ah, I see what you’re saying. And I can see that you also rushed the head.”

“I think we all did,” Talib remarked, glancing around the room. Most of the sculptures seemed to have tilting heads, pinched or nonexistent faces. “Guess Rutfang’s going to focus on that, huh?”

“Absolutely.” Gilik straightened up. “Can I see the back of your sculpture?” She turned hers around to show that side on hers as well. Talib shifted his piece, revealing the back of it. “Oh, that looks really good,” Gilik said. “I can even see the shoulder blades.” She gestured with a finger, careful not to touch it. Talib nodded.

“I guess I spent more time looking at the model’s back than their front. I think they were facing me more towards the end, and that’s when I tried to switch my focus to their head.” Professor Rutfang interrupted before Gilik could say more, calling the class to attention. “Alright, wrap up and come together.” She waited a moment until everyone was quiet and facing her. “From what I’ve seen and heard, I know most of you had some similar difficulties with this project. When you’re sculpting faster and don’t have time to perfect the whole thing, it’s easy to get focused on one part and then rush other parts.” The class murmured in agreement, sheepish smiles and averted glances proving her point.

“You’ve gotten used to having more time to work on a full piece, which is the usual way of doing things. But I think it’s important to learn some skills that will speed up your process.” She gestured Kouto over as she spoke. “Instead of making your sculpture one part at a time, you should try to focus on multiple areas in shorter bursts. It helps with proportion accuracy, and it can prevent your sculptures from looking amazing in one area and sloppy in another.”

Talib looked down at his piece, all detailed in the torso but with a very unfinished head. He looked back up to see Kouto was taking their position again, leaving the bathrobe aside. Professor Rutfang started into her lecture, using her own lump of clay to demonstrate the techniques she was discussing.

She settled the basic proportions of the sculpture quickly, forming the body in stacked chunks and quickly shaving them down or building them up to size. She corrected the pose and then fixed the seams with slip, smoothing them out. Her rapid sculpture was small, but the speed and accuracy were still impressive. She described each step as she worked, so the whole class could understand what she was doing.

“And from there, you can start adding your detail and correcting the pose as you get new angles to work from. But there’s a lot you can infer about the full figure even if you only look from one angle.” She walked around Kouto’s platform, giving it a gentle push so it turned with her. Kouto looked like they were trying to suppress an amused smile. “For the rest of the quarter, I want you to make small quick sculptures of our model in different poses. One a week, two class sessions per pose. They’ll be imperfect. But they’ll teach you some important skills.” Professor Rutfang stopped walking and the platform came to a slow halt. Standing still with her clay-coated hands against her hips, she silently glanced around the room.

“Now, of course, you can’t always rely on being able to sculpt a live model during every step of your process. You might be using a model to get an accurate pose for a historical or fictional figure. Or perhaps your personal work is more stylized, and working with a model simply won’t help. And in general, you probably won’t have access to a model every time you sculpt.” She nodded towards the sculpture wall, where she kept her own finished works as well as those of some past students and a few master works.

“The famous statue of Goug’ele’s Triumph, made by Tahlrin Pelok after the goblin revolution. It took him months to complete. He started it some years after the World Declaration on Personhood was written. He couldn’t have Goug’ele themself come stand in that exact pose for days on end.” She cracked a smile. “He actually asked a few different goblins to pose for him, and the majority of the work was done without a model reference.” The class took interest, examining the statue’s smaller copy on the shelf. Gilik grinned.

“Some of my ancestors fought alongside Goug’ele,” she whispered to Talib. He nodded in reply, but cast his glance towards Kouto, recalling their interest in the art of the goblin revolution. Professor Rutfang continued speaking.

“So, for your big project that I expect you to complete by the end of the quarter,” she said, drawing their attentions back, “I want each of you to make a unique sculpture of your choice. It must be a sculpture of a person, and it must have a realistic style. You can make sketches and small practice pieces to plan it out. You might take interest in one of the poses from a class session and decide to use it. No matter what you choose to do, you will of course need to work on it during open studio hours, when you will not have a model to work with.” “So it doesn’t have to be anyone specific?” one student asked. Professor Rutfang nodded.

“Any species, any gender. I have many reference sculptures you can look at to get inspiration. I’ve had past students do self portraits, even.” She laughed. “Bold choice, that. It’s entirely up to you.” A few other students asked clarifying questions about the size, whether or not they could glaze it, and if they could add extra details like having the figure sit on a stump, or hold an object. When the questions stopped, professor Rutfang cleared her throat and addressed the class one more time.

“So, I think that covers it all. If you find that you don’t have enough time to make your big project, come talk to me and I’ll let you into the extra closed sessions. They happen in the evenings, the day before each class session. Kouto has generously volunteered their time there. All that aside, with the remaining time you have today, I just want you all to take the sculptures you have now and see how much you can do to fix them up.” She stepped aside, and the room became noisy with the sounds of tools being picked up and set down, water dripping as it was used to dampen clay, and students chatting quietly with their table partners.

Kouto’s platform had come to a stop facing Talib’s table. He lifted his gaze, briefly making eye contact with Kouto while he worked on fixing the clay recreation of their face. They broke their neutral expression to smile at him, reassuring and friendly. He smiled back, and he felt the tension in his mind loosen up, making him just a little less worried about all the work he’d have to finish in the next weeks.

--- As the figure sculpting class wrapped up, Kouto stepped back into the storage closet to get dressed. Packing the bathrobe into their bag and stepping out, they looked around for Talib, only to find he must have left already.

“Oh,” Kouto mumbled, “suppose he had something else to get to.” They shouldered their bag and left the studio amongst the lingering students, still unable to spot Talib anywhere. With a short sigh, they put a smile back on their face and turned off the path to get to their next class.

#winks writing #love is an art #writeblr #romance writing #do u have any idea how hard it is to come up with fictional history facts and names on the fly #especially for goblin history #the things i do to myself for writing lol

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