What's going on!

I thought that I would keep you updated about what is going on here…
Last April I left the studio in Denmark on a quest to learn and perfection my skills in order to provide better works for you.

This search is taking place in England. My first stop was a 3-days workshop with wildlife sculptress Nick Mackman. The workshop took place at Mapstone studio, located in the heart of Dartmoor National Park. It was a perfect location and organization hosted by Nina, who I must say, cooked awesome lunch for us.
 
Nick’s expertise in wildlife was very interesting. She sometimes holds workshops in Africa and the students have a fantastic chance to be observing the animals behavior and magnificence in real life; I guess that is an extra when you wanna capture the real essence. I do get a lot of my own dogs moods in my sculptures and I was thinking on them as I worked on my project. The result was this sitting miniature Schnauzer.


After the Workshop my next stop was Chard, at Rich’s sculpture casting studio. I’ll be here for at least two weeks on an apprentice basis. My first week has been really exiting, I helped Josh, one of the assistants, to make a mold on a huge head horse, we used some 40 kilos of rubber to cover it all with several layers, and then we started to build the case, which is taking me several days, I was supposed to finish on Friday but I ran out of materials! I was also putting hands on a large size dog sculpture that needed to be assembled and detailed. And I also got to fill up some molds with resin and different components. On Monday we are going to cast a giant hare with resin and fiberglass, I am already starting to feel itchy by the idea of the fiberglass. The mold has 7 parts and it sounds struggling hard work, which makes it, for me, a really interesting process to see. I’m looking forward to take part of it.
Here are some pictures of last week for you to enjoy 🙂

 
If you are curious follow these links to know more:
My workplace in Denmark is hosted by a dear friend, ceramist Finn Dam Rasmussen, check out his work at www.finnkeramik.dk
The Sculpture workshop in England took place at Mapstone Studio, please visit the website to find out more, they always have interesting workshops and courses going on, I absolutely recommend Nina’s place to learn in a relaxed environment with great artists
www.mapstonestudio.com
Nick Mackman has been the tutor at the workshop about animal sculpture, check out her website to find out more about her delicious work  www.nickmackmansculpture.co.uk
My two weeks apprenticeship takes place at Rich’s studio in Chard, UK. Here works the coolest people, check it out and pass it along if you need some fine work to be done, these guys will know what to do 🙂 www.richssculpturecastings.com

The horse head I’ve been working on last week 😉

 
 
Barbara.