The Many Faces of Vic

Luckily my Victor has a very good sense of humor - As you can see he also has a pretty rubbery face!

This relief was made by way of an experiment and a bit of fun. I wanted to practice my portraiture and facial expressions in relief sculpture - which is very important by the way.

For those people who know Vic they might be able to recognise bits of this. I myself think that some of the portraits do capture a resemblance and most of them do capture the strange facial expressions which he is capable of achieving.

A friend of mine called by when I had just begun the sculpture and when she saw the photos I was working from she actually thought that some of those did not look like Vic either. I suppose photos are like that - they don't always capture the essential likeness of the person either. With that in mind I concentrated more upon the various expressions and face pulling that he made, instead of worrying too much about getting a good likeness. The two work together anyway - so the better sculptures do capture a better likeness I would venture to say.

I think that I have had some success with this piece. Most of the strange, twisted expressions are well observed and capture some sort of feeling (madness springs to mind! x). As I have already said I think there are some moments of likeness too, so it has been a very worthwhile exercise. Some of the very smallest faces were very difficult. It was easier to get detail and likeness in the larger faces, so that is good to know. I imagine though working very large you would also encounter problems making all parts hang together without distortion. So I think there is probably a comfortable optimum size to work with. Good learning!

This plaque is approximately 20cm in Diameter, so you can visualise the sizes I was working with.

When I worked i worked my way around the plaque, roughing out the forms first and then slowly building the faces up and finally fine tuning them. This helped to keep an even balance of finishment across the whole surface and design.

I did think it might be nice to put some strange amorphous jester's hat onto the heads, but it would take a bit of working out and I might save that for another time as i have rather a lot of other stuff to do at present - and this was after all just an exercise, so for now Vic must remain hatless. I can see this plaque turning up in some quirky little corner in our new home!