A few weeks back after finishing the ‘Zombie Animator’ for the Animation Art Show I decided to take a little break from the busts that I had been working on previously and try something different and also in a different medium. I decided to do a full figure this time, albeit a scaled one, not life size. I also switched from my usual soft terracotta Chavant clay, ‘Le Beau Touché’, and moved to the harder Chavant (NSP medium). Progress is much slower when using the hard clay, you spend a lot of time warming and kneading the clay, but the results are great, the sculpture is far more solid and durable.

The concept behind this piece is an elderly Predator who has won his final battle and is near dead with exhaustion, propping himself up on his spear. I really love the Predator as a cinematic character and it’s something I have always wanted to have a go at sculpting. I’ve seen many fan tributes to the Predator, most are roaring and howling warriors, so for something different I decided to take a different look at him and went with this more subdued pose that hopefully will tell a story.

You can see from the progression images that the sculpture evolves over time, I’m constantly scrapping work and starting over, and altering the pose. The current head is actually a 3rd version, 2 previous ones were completely dumped and started again. I don’t like to work detail into an overall shape that is wrong because details will never save a bad shape. In one of the progression images you can see I added dreadlocks, adding temporary items like this can give you a good idea of how the overall piece is shaping up, but ultimately those details will be the last items added.

Still lots more to come, more work on the hands and legs, not to mention the spear he will be holding himself up with, and perhaps a surprise sculpt of his defeated prey on the ground beside him… stay tuned!