Online demonstration by Rebecca Buck

12th September 2020

On Saturday Sep 12th SWP held our first Zoom demo. As there has been little expenditure on events, exhibitions etc, we were able to make it free to members and hope to hold more in the current situation. Keep your eye out for news in Shards and the Mailchimp newsletters.

We invited Rebecca Buck, who is a well-known professional sculptor with work in collections across the world. As we know from experience, she is a great demonstrator and gifted teacher, as well as being a long-time member of SWP.

Rebecca’s demo/lesson was about making a small human figure. The emphasis was on getting proportions correct, essential for figurative work. She worked from a picture/diagram of a human figure with skeleton etc visible. She initially lay the rough figure on the diagram then constantly checked proportions and adjusted the figure as she worked on the pose and detail.

For anyone inexperienced in figurative work, the demo was a brilliant way to make a start but also provided basic principles which should be carried into any work. I have experience, but nevertheless also found the session invaluable. Rebecca was able to impart a great deal of information, and the wisdom of experience and rigorous training from her early years. It is good to be taken back to such important basic principles and I know it will help improve my own efforts. Rebecca’s work is abstract these days but she carries these principles of proportion through all her work. There was a follow-up interactive Zoom session on Saturday (26th) in which members showed their pieces they had been working on so she could offer help and advice and answers questions.

We thank Rebecca’s son Leon, who operated the camera so expertly, switching from longer-range views of Rebecca’s demo to close-ups of the figure she was working on. We hope one day to have live events including first-class demonstrations, but after the success of this event it is likely that Zoom demos and meetings will continue to play a part.