Jane Richmond 16th March 2024

Jane works in clay but also uses watercolours and other materials to enhance her work. In this instance the demonstration was using clay from a block.

She started her career working part time, creating smaller shapes before deciding to move on to be full time artist. A highlight was appearing on television in 'Home is Where the Art is' and when she won the commission,  her career really  took off and  since then she hasn't looked back.

Today, she slowly built up a head shape adding to it where needed, working in a tried and tested way that suits her subject matter. She often works on a range of sculptures  at the same time in various stages of finishing.

When working on the sculpture she says, "You must remember to turn it 360 degrees making sure that you work on all the way round and not just on the front for it to be successful."

Having started with the basic shape of a woman's head, she drew a line half way across vertically and adds horizontal  lines where the features, such as the eyes and nose, would be.

When working on commissions she stressed that it was important for her to talk to clients to make sure she knows exactly what they want.

Next, she carried on adding shapes to the head and slowly the features started to appear, She stated   that knowing the anatomy of the face is important to her work.  She  continued by making two small balls the same size to add as eyes, before  starting to add muscles to the face. 

Working in her studio it would take several hours to do one of these heads, but for this demonstration she can work a lot quicker.

She continued by adding  more features and muscles continually visualizing it in 3D. When working she doesn't use tools until the basic shape is formed by hand. 

When working with beginners the mistakes they  often make are to  start adding features too soon or in random areas which can create problems. One way to get around this is to squint and you then see just the basic shapes.

When asked about adding ears she does this to show how it is done, although in many cases a hat or hair mean these can't be seen in her work.

At this stage she started to to smooth out some areas and continued to work on the features before adding hair.

By this time it was starting to get  near  to the final image that  she hoped for and demonstrated how she would achieve hollowing out the final sculpture (Hollowing out is done from horizontal cuts) Even though in reality this would be done at a later stage when it would be dryer and the shape would not collapse. 

She then joined this section, back together to finish working on it for this session, and then revealed that the idea for the face came from a Modigliani portrait.

Jane doesn't use glazes which is very technical skill as she wasn't taught this way. This is just her particular way of working with final colours added using acrylic paint. 

An impressive demonstration and it's not often that someone can work in front of a group and pass on so much useful information about a working process and how their style has developed. 
An enjoyable afternoon spent with  a knowledgeable artist.