Bad Hair Day

[JLynn]

I have only taken a few sculpting classes and hair was only addressed for a few minutes.

Does any one have any suggestions on how to handle long hair? (Photos, sites or explanations would be appreciated it.) I tend to lean toward hair in motion, which also seems to be part of the problem...

[fritchie]

JLynn - When I was doing full figures, it was directly from the model. Some had long hair and some had short. I'm afraid my experiences won't help there. I have used photographs for details lately though, now that I'm mostly working from imagination. I would suggest you try to find photographs with an effect of the sort you want.

[ironman]

Hi, One good thing about sculpting a figure with long hair is that you don't have to do the tedious job of making ears! Ha, ha.
Have a great day,
Jeff

[ALH]

Eyes, water, smoke, hair...

These things are a problem if you want to be very literal but there is no rule stating you have to be absolutely accurate to life and even a few tricks if you wish to.

If you want to give your impression of hair, on top of your impression of whomever, just let your fingers do what you see. You could also use symbols for the wave of the hair or the pupils of the eye. Art books or this website will be useful there as countless sculptors have gone before you and have developed any number of visual symbols to represent the unrepresentable. Adding colour gives you another angle to approach this problem.

If you must be slavish to the look of real hair and have time to spare you could 'plant' real hair, one strand at a time. In Canada Mark Prent (now in the States) and Even Penny have had great results with this.

This is pretty vague, hope it helps.

[sculptor]

Lynn:
Hi:
as/re:
Hair

see the mermaid:
http://www.sculpture.net/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=1118

on this one, the client wanted the breasts covered-----so I lengthened her hair and tried to guess how it could possibly react in the wind so that it would cover the breasts-----(which is why the "upwind" side is braided)

so it started as a coverup, and blossomed into a positive component of the image------
Hair, "especially hair in motion" offers an opportunity to increase the dynamic quality of something(sculpture) which is inherently static.----and a damned site easier than attaining the correct muscular interactions of a body in motion.
-------so the "problem" offers an opportunity in its resolution

Then, you'll have the constraints of molding and casting-----molding really thin hair sections is darned difficult, so in the mermaid, you do not see some of the thinner windblown stray hairs---

realistic figurative sculpture doesn't require realism-----just something within the realm of possibility and probability----and for my taste, should have a sense of beauty.


rod

[oddist]

Bruno Lucchesi does a good job sculpting hair...I believe he goes over it in his book on Modeling the Head in Clay (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0823030997/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/002-0711932-1254469?v=glance&s=books).

[Arnis]

The hair should be lays over the under shapes and show up it.Details you can see how it mat Egyptian and Greek .But you have to be sure that .You have base sape for that.You can carve your hair in a negative plaster mold.You will have an extrimpy good effect.If you want more realistic hair use material or fabric as hair and molding it.Good luck.

[JasonGillespie]

Hair, as with most details in figurative sculpture, looks best when modeled as opposed to being incised. Look for the large forms and don't get bogged down in the individual strands. For the purpose of sculpture, being too literal with hair can detract from the overall effect.

Go an look up work by some of the better 19th century sculptors like Daniel Chester French and Augustus St. Gaudens. http://www.danielchesterfrench.org/ They won't be quite as decorative as earlier sculptors or quite as boring as later sculptors in their treatment of hair. Whether it is long or short, a certain amount of volume and movement should always be present.

[mtd]

One thing I learned while sculpting alot of hair lately is that it looks more like hair and less like rope if you keep the forms twisting like a hielix. Even if your model has straight hair it's general folw and move ment will twist.

Here are a few shot of some hair I did recently. (please forgive me, this is not intended as a shamless plug)

[mtd]

Thanks for the kind words.

The piece you posted also shows clearly the twisting hielixing forms. I think these shapes are what really sell hair. Even if you want to sculpt large forms with very little detail the flow will still want to twist.
MD

[mtd]

here's a link of a sculptor whos portrait work I really like.
Notice how she sculpts hair in large undetailed shapes but htey have that twisting flow, some more than others, but it's there in all of them.
MD

http://www.bronzesculpture.net/jane/portraits/portraits.htm

[slivings]

Think about hair not as we know it, not as a soft, maleable, airy thing, but think of it as volume and form. This helped me a lot. Trying to make "hair" is nearly impossible, making form that resembles hair is totally do-able. I look at manga to be honest. The way hair is drawn in anime is more about the form of it and that helped me to understand how to approach it. Don't fell bad, it's hard.

[dwright]

These are photos taken at the foundry of a couple of recent works with long swirling hair and beards. Just another approach, based on very stylized impressions of hair.
As you can see, there are lots of ways to do it.

[HappySculpting]

Hair has got to be high on my list of the favorite part of the figurative sculpture to do. It's so easy to do in water clay. I use two sizes of brushes. One that is a fairly coarse brush and another that is not so coarse and much smaller for the detail areas. You just pull the brush in the direction of the hair and is makes the hair lines for you. Then I use a dental tool to incise and make deeper lines in areas that I want contrast. I love flowing hair going in all different pleasing directions- just enough to add interest but not enough to be too busy.