Darla Jackson Sculpture: Armature

While I was in the studio yesterday (freezing my ass off), I also started an armature for a piece I've been wanting to make.

My workspace is pretty full of...everything...

First a dive into the armature bin...Justin and I keep all of our armatures and repurpose them over and over again. We are still using armatures we made while in school, adding new ones when the old ones aren't quite right. Luckily I found an old figure armature that would work with some tweaking.

We also have a collection of pipe nipples (who decided to call them that?) and flanges and connectors, which is great because when the armature I found had a 3/8" nipple (rather than a 1/2" one, which I normally use), I was able to find a 3/8" flange to match it in our stash, instead of having to go to home depot.

I did a quick sketch of the rough pose to bend the armature to...the pose will inevitably change (as they always do once I start sculpting) but this was a place to start.

Next I selected a board to mount the armature on.

I marked the placement of where the holes should be and then drilled them.

The flange was a bad casting so all the holes were filled slightly blocked with excess metal, so I drilled that out too so the machine screws would go in smoothly.

Each hole got a machine screw, a washer and a nut. You just have to make sure they aren't too long and extend past the runners on your board.

Once everything was in, I tightened it down.

And then screwed the armature piece into the flange. This was used for a figure in the past, so I turned it around and the wire that would normally be used for the head, I used as the tail. The arms and legs were just re-bent to work for this application.

I added an extra piece of armature wire to the front, so the cat will have a head.

When the wires feel a little loose, I put a screw in the hole...the aluminum wires are soft enough that the screw threads into them a bit, locking everything into place.