During the process of creating this piece, I was finally able to narrow down my concentration: Freak Show Performers. I notice in hindsight that this might have been inspired by many of my friends fan-girling over American Horror Story but I hope to interpret these characters very differently and come up with my own version of classic acts first made popular in 16th century England.
For this concentration, I decided to create a male character based off the "strong man" act that was known for his signature facial hair and for lifting heavy objects or humans in front of a live audience.
I really wanted my strong man to be holding a toothpick in his mouth so the first obvious thing to do was use one of my classmates, Peter, as a model.
I then create my two pinch pots, attached them, added dents for the eye sockets and added a mustache, nose, chin, and lower lip.
I also took a giant lump of clay and shaped it into a preliminary shoulder and chest form.
I added eyes and eyelids and refined some of the structural details of my character's face.
I soon noticed how unnatural he looked with his mouth closed like that so I had to rip off that pretty little mustache and sculpt a more toothy mouth.
First order of business: find the perfect model:
MYSELF!
Do you see a resemblance? Because I sure do! And yes, I am a part-time model, thank you for asking.
After not capturing the absolute perfect expression for my Strong Man because I cannot model for my life, I set on a quest to sculpt the expression I wanted with a more test and check approach.
Exhibit A:
![](//3.bp.blogspot.com/-jDKrRwuX364/VFVCu2N_oyI/AAAAAAAAANg/fcaC3MYAWGw/s1600/IMG_7365.jpg)
Uh.... no.
Exhibit B:
![](//4.bp.blogspot.com/-cc0tJGcmsPA/VFVCwNJiUBI/AAAAAAAAAOA/mrNFqSLY8OQ/s1600/IMG_7369.jpg)
Closer but still no.
I decided to move on to another part of the sculpting process and come back to Strong Man's face later because I was going no where at that point.
So I skipped over to my favorite part: REMOVING THE INNARDS!
Teeheeee you can see his nose holes
Being the genius that I am, I thinned out too much around his eye ONCE AGAIN (yes, I have done this once before) and I don't know if you can see by the picture above, but I had to patch up his eye and re-sculpt it.
I then reattached his scalp and moved on to plopping his head onto a neck and then onto a chest.
I proceeded to adding some muscles and had to unfortunately use reference photos of really ugly men (it is really hard to write sarcastically but what I in fact am being sarcastic; these reference photos made my day, Tom Hardy is beautiful and has mad trapz that should be worshipped)
My teacher also gave me a heads up (pun intended) when she noticed that my sculpture's face was pointed up in an unnatural angle.
He looks quite scrawny in the above photo but I eventually added almost another head length of clay to his shoulders and refined his muscles.
I also added ears to top off his main anatomy.
As you can see, I broadened his shoulders and added his one-strap costume.
And with this large amount of added clay, comes the need to...
REMOVE THE INNARDS!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAH
The result was a very large amount of scrap clay and a satisfaction that is very concerning to have had after carving out the insides of a fake person. I should probably talk to someone about that.....
ANYWAY
I used water and some paintbrushes to smooth out the surfaces of his skin and finalize any rough edges.
I also used some texture tools to add the fur effect to his singlet!
And here he is! Say hello to Strong Man!