Each 3D artwork can involve lots of little elements. Each of which could fall off. 3D art allows you to add any number of additions to an artwork. For my ‘Drunken Bottles’ artwork I could print any number of bottles, and place them wherever I wanted on the frame. They could be lying on top of each other, or hang over the end of the frame. But the more fanciful I get, the more risk… Read More »How to stop a a 3D model from falling apart
Three big parcels arrived today. They contained my torso sculptures. I’m pleased. The torsos look great (in my opinion). There are four of them, in silver, black, red and white. Each penis, coming from a different model, is a different size and shape. There is nothing idealised about them. That’s the beauty of 3D modelling – it shows what’s real. Given the limitations of the scanning and printing process, they don’t show pubic hair. The… Read More »My torsos have arrived
My torso sculptures need to be bolted into place, to keep them upright. That means rods in their legs which must be screwed into a plinth. You can buy ready-made plinths – or rent them for a week which would be cost effective only if you never planned more than one exhibition. ArtPlinths.co.uk make some nice looking ones, but they aren’t cheap. And I’m not sure they would meet my exact needs. Not that I’m… Read More »Some day my plinths will come
My naked men are being built. I’ve received some photos of them in production. The one in the photo looks dramatic, pornographic even. It’s upside down on the printer. When finished it will be the right way up.
I have rented a garage – at enormous, wasteful cost. The aim is to give me work space in my own garage – I’m lucky enough to have a garage, despite living close in a fairly urban environment. This also means putting my 2002 charcoal MGTF into effectively storage. I felt bad about that. The TF range was the last sports car to be produced on a British production line. So I feel protective about… Read More »Converting the garage to a studio
The guy who is printing my male torsos has come back with a problem. He has printed one of my torsos, but has ended up with a ‘lower polygon count’. In lay person’s language this means a less smooth, less realistic surface. People will see the surface is made up of thousands of little blocks. He thinks that could be OK because it would be ‘a tribute to the digital process of a model’s creation’.… Read More »How lifelike should sculpture be?
Today I had a Zoom meeting with a bunch of tech people talking about … tech. It’s not my favourite subject, but they were going to be talking about … 3D printing. So I needed to know what was going on. Maybe they had some really expensive scanners and printers? Maybe they had experts who could hold my hand and explain 3D technology to me? It turned out some of them wanted to get… Read More »I’m on the scrounge for free 3D kit
The artist Anthea Hamilton told a scary tale about being offered a commission at Tate Britain – and had no idea what to put into the exhibition. All she knew was that there should be a pumpkin character, because of some mime artists she’d seen. The Tate staff would ask her what would be in the exhibition. “We’d keep having meetings, and they’d say, ‘What’s going to happen?’ And I’d say ‘I don’t know’.… Read More »Being brave enough to admit you don’t know what you’re doing.
Many who write about being an artist tell me I should spend six to 10 hours a day in the studio. That makes sense if you’re a painter or a sculptor. But the kind of work I do isn’t like that. Much of the advice given to artists mostly applies to fine art painters. But it isn’t relevant to anyone who has a different focus. A lot of my work is outsourced. It has… Read More »How much time in the studio? Should we sell direct? Do we need galleries?
My previous sculptures have been laid on a cafeteria tray and glued to it; so the possibility of them falling over hasn’t arisen. Now, however, I’m dealing with the human body, which stands upright on two legs. For sculptors who deal in the human frame and similar upright sculptures, the answer will be well rehearsed. If there is minimal contact between the sculpture and the plinth, you need to incorporate some kind of support into… Read More »How to stop a statue falling over
