(2-27-19) I entered this in our local Veterans Creative Arts competition and won first place in the sculpture category!
After practicing on the large faces, I’m back to doing a smaller scale piece. I’m focusing this time on composition and overall movement in the piece.
This one is Odin releasing one of his ravens, (Huginn), from a mountain top over Midgard so he can join Muninn in flying around Midgard and gathering information for Odin. This is my first time sculpting a male figure completely clothed and my first attempt at sculpting and animal.
In my imagining of this piece I wanted to portray Odin not as the typical heroic figure that we normally see, but as a normal man, going about his daily duties. Consequently, I wanted to get as close to authentic Viking clothes as I possibly could.
The Hurstwic website has been an invaluable resource for me and the clothing designs you see on Odin here were inspired by the clothing I found on that website. My grateful thanks to them for putting together such a great and helpful site!
I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. I’m payed a lot more attention to the actual composition of the piece, the lines, the wind direction, the balance of the elements, etc., and I think it payed off. The photos below are in reverse order, so start at the bottom and work your way up to see the progress from armature to completion.