My Spinner Sculpture

Well, I've been told I should post this here. So here goes..

I guess I should give you a bit of his background. I've dubbed him Hephaestus for now. He was created for my college sculpture course. Done in just a couple weeks worth of build time. I'm not completely happy with how he turned out but since I was working in the studio until well after midnight most of the time I'm happy with how much I got done in the time I did it. He is steel with aluminum diamond plate. Completely salvaged other than some threaded rod and 6' of chain. All in all he cost me a whole $12.


Ignore the JK on his chest, that was done as a joke to see if my prof would say anything about it, which he didnt. It's not on there anymore I just haven't taken new pictures with it removed so this is whats getting posted.

He's got plenty of issues, things I won't go into here since I've found when I start critiquing my work in front of people they see the faults that they would otherwise overlook.

Feel free to give me an honest critique, I look forward to it. Thats the easiest way to progress in art... My professor was worried that people wouldn't understand it since he had no idea what I was talking about when I told him I was going to build a spinner. My audiance wasn't for the general public though, it was foor my peers and fellow spinners (you guys) so I value your opinion foremost.

I guess I'll shut up and show you the pictures now, sorry they arent the best they're taken with my cell phone.

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I think the diamond plate is a bit.. distracting I guess. As my tastes go I would like it if it were either all black diamond plate or all polished.
it would have been nice if you had something more solid looking to connect the head, but I understand working with the materials you have.

eh the welds/joins seem a bit sloppy. A more seamless look would be better, but it's bloody hard to weld perfectly and generally seems to require a lot of experience.

I can't really tell but it looks like one foot has like a shroud over it made out of diamond plate aluminum and the other doesn't. I don't like asymetry.

matte paint would look better in contrast to the shiny flames... but I think that's purely an opinion of taste probably.

oh yeah the shape of the "ass" is a bit bizarre. It looks like a chair. A bit more of an organic sort of angle would be nice, so it flows into the spine.

I like the perceived movement. Im impressed and would be happy to have it grace my house

Which welds are you refering to? They're all strong clean welds for the most part, I just didn't take the time to grind them down. I learned from my dad who was an industrial welder for the railroad so I tend to make things extra beefy

The actual "project" was to use pigment as a dominate part of the piece. I could debated with myself quite a bit as to just how I was going to use it and decided that was the best method. It gives it a nice unique texture (it looks better in person) and the whole piece has much more of an industrial look than a clean cut look. Especially with all the hammer marks I purposly left in the back of the plates. Yes I hand hammered them all out.

The feet are an issue that I haven't completely resolved yet, they were done quickly because of lack of time, both feet do have diamond plate on them however the back foot is down the sole while the front is down the top.

As for his back and chest, I'm still not happy with them yet. As you said the 'ass' is very square. He has no mass across his shoulders when viewed from the side or back which really bothers me. His head is small for the size of the body. The body is measured directly off of me while the head was designed over a maniquin head that we had laying around. The negative space in the neck was done on purpose and looked better than running yet another tube up for the spine.