Bit of a fun weekend project : ). I've always disliked using those art shop manikin's that are available to buy as a drawing aids, sure you will have seen them about, yup! those lanky wooden ones that aren't in proper proportion with the long heads and really limited movement (legs glued on at the pelvis!) Aaaaargh! Hate em! It's not that the idea's a bad one, not at all, having a little figurine to work out tricky poses and lighting I think is a great idea, but unfortunately the usual manufactured format that are available frankly (as the Americans would say...) SUCKS!
So I decided to have a crack at building my own out of florists wire and modelling putty over the weekend, I wanted to make my little chap smaller so he'd fit in my pocket, and more bendy, so he'd be good for doing thumbnaily stuff from. So I got all my anatomy books out, plus some measuring dividers, and a few other bits and pieces and got busy. I had to build him in fazes to let some bits dry before continuing on with other parts (so the previous finished bits didn't get squished) so I kept coming back to it quite a lot as the putty takes a few hours to harden up. I think it turned out pretty cool though, I Kept things pretty basic with the musculature (I'm no sculpture) but really tried hard to get the proportions and masses as accurate as I could, I suppose florists wire will no doubt snap eventually with lots of bending, but the extra pose-ability is worth the snap factor, and when it does inevitably break I should hopefully be able to mend it again pretty easy anyhow. I might try building some 'scenes' to set it within in the future too - rocks from the garden maybe or whatever else comes to mind.
... got excited and made a bigger poseable hand as well! (see photo)
