Moving forward- the dog

The difficulty about creating a blog that documents the progress of a sculpture is that when you are knee deep in creating the sculpture you have very little time for blogging. So here we go, backdating some of these posts and letting you know the progress.

You can never have enough reference. It is something I say often in my life as a sculptor.  I spent hours learning about seeing eye dogs, talking to the Seeing Eye in New Jersey, watching video of how a dog walks. I studied the anatomy of a walking dog and reviewed many movies.  There were changes and modifications that we made after approval and I pulled the love of dogs, the love of some specific dogs and the love for seeing eye dogs into one clay sculpture that would be made into a bronze.  This was no easy task.  This dog probably had a little of my own love and loss. While creating it my family suffered a horrible tragedy. My daughter and son in law's house burned down and their family dog, Sam was lost. Sam was a rescue dog that I fostered for years before they adopted her. So as I labored over this dog, I thought about Sam.  Lots of love went into this dog. Here are some photographs of the progress of creating John's dog.

You can never have enough reference. Along with these I had
about 10 movies of walking dogs. 

Adding the dog to the scene was not an easy task. Often
sculpting means a little bit of acrobatics.  

Carve, add clay, step back, crawl on the floor, look at reference,
carve, add clay, step back cut something off, move it, add clay.
This is what I do all day long. 

Just as I moved around John, I moved around
the dog, adding clay, carving foam, moving
limbs. This is my sculptor's dance. 

Much to do.  And remember the harness
and John's hand must line up.  

Off with his/her head.  After crawling around
on the floor, it feel good to sit in a chair and work.