#37 fluidity and flow

After a request to email alternate views of two of my sculptures earlier today, I decided to post them on here. The nudes were sculpted back in 2004 from live models and molded and casted in bronze a couple of years later after I moved to Colorado. They were the beginning of a series of sculptures called simple beauty in which the model was not so much posed according to a design I had in mind, but rather doing what she thought looked natural. Of course, there is nothing new with this idea as most art schools let the model choose the pose. I had observed some artists' works whom I thought would let the model pose to their liking and noticed that the works were usually more pleasing to the eye. These were artworks that didn't have much meaning and I had guessed them to be almost 'spontaneously' created. There seems to be a flow when you let a model choose a pose. Another example of this is in a commissioned piece I am working on. Several months ago, I had four models who were to pose for a project I was hoping to get. They were willing to take direction from me and when I had them take the pose that I had in mind, everything looked static and didn't flow. So I asked them to naturally get in a pose that they were comfortable with (within certain guidelines). Well, what happened was the pose that they got into happened to be the pose I used for the maquette which ended up winning the competition. So this theory worked in the public art arena as well. My lesson was to not plan every detail out until models are hired (if they are hired) as nature usually proves to be the best option. Simple beauty was my first experiment into that idea.