From the Bony Skull to the Warm Smile: Sculpting the Human Head for Beginners

This course will give students with an interest in portraiture and figurative sculpture a thorough understanding of the anatomy of the human head in a practical and fun way. Over three sessions students will learn how to sculpt an anatomically correct human skull, add muscles to this skull, and create an expressive figurative sculpture. As a class we will look at what generally distinguishes the male from the female facial structure, how age, and weight affects facial features, and learn how to create believable expressions of sadness, anger and joy in our sculpture through understanding how the face moves.

We will work without a life-model gaining confidence in the fact that thinking anatomically through volume and form and appreciating how muscles, bone and fat interact, can help them to create what we recognize as the human head. Students will look at anatomical drawings, handle a model skull and use their own heads as guides in turning science into art.

Students will be provided with illustrated handouts and are encouraged to bring a camera to document their work as it progresses between classes. This course aims to provide you with the confidence to approach figurative sculpture creatively and see that beauty is in fact not only skin deep.

Instructor
Juliana Cerqueira Leite is a Brazilian/American artist currently based in Brooklyn. She completed her MFA Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2006 and an MA in Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts, also in London, in 2007. Juliana has exhibited her work internationally with group shows in Tokyo, Copenhagen, London and New York. Recent shows include The East Wing Collection 8 at the Courtauld Art Institute, London, Subject | Matter, at the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, and solo shows at Trolley Gallery in London and the Banff Arts Centre, Alberta, Canada. Juliana is the recipient of the 2006 Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize and was recently awarded the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship.

Often products of physically demanding activity, her sculptures engage the history of figurative art challenging notions of the body as static and re-formulating figurative representation to reflect the qualities that differentiate living matter from non-living matter. Her sculptures relate to the artist’s body through its proportions and form, often products of repetitive activities such as digging or crawling, combined with simple intentions such as moving forward or backward.   View her work here: www.julianacerqueiraleite.com

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