sculpting the Torso/Portrait
Saturdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm (3 hours)
6 classes: $550 (all supplies included)
Starts May 23, 2026
Instructor:
Kaelin Palcu
Class Description:
In this 6-week course students will have the choice of working either on torso or portrait sculpture. Working at half-life scale, students will develop a deeper understanding of proportion, mass, and anatomical structure through sustained study from life. Participants will work from both female and male models over the duration of the course, gaining exposure to different body types and structural rhythms.
Torso
The focus is on clarity: organizing the ribcage and pelvis, understanding their relationship, and building the torso from the inside outward.
The course emphasizes:
Structural block-in and proportional accuracy
Major masses of the ribcage and pelvis
Skeletal landmarks and surface form
Planes of the abdomen, back, and thorax
Compression, tilt, and directional force
Translating live observation into three-dimensional form
Early sessions focus on establishing primary masses and spatial relationships. As the weeks progress, students will examine skeletal structure and major muscle groups, refining their understanding of how form wraps, overlaps, and connects.
The goal is not simply to complete a finished torso, but to build a clear working knowledge of its architecture. Through guided demonstrations and individual feedback, students will strengthen their ability to move between observation and construction, developing structural confidence that supports all future figurative work.
Portrait
The focus will be on developing a deep understanding of the portrait through working from a live model. The emphasis is on block-ins, learning to sketch with clay, and becoming comfortable interpreting the features of the head in three dimensions.
Students will begin with multiple short starts in order to build confidence and fluency in clay — treating sculpture as a form of note-taking and observation rather than a single long project. These early exercises are designed to help students loosen up, simplify, and organize information quickly while sharpening tools of observation.
The course introduces a basic functional artistic anatomy of the head so students understand not just what they are seeing, but why forms appear the way they do. We will focus on the structure of the skull, major planes of the head, and how features sit within that structure. The goal is to give students a clear and practical framework they can return to in both sculpture and two-dimensional work.
After the initial sketching phase, students will transition into a longer pose using the same model over the remaining weeks. This portion serves as an introduction to naturalistic modeling — learning how to interpret, refine, and develop the portrait over time while maintaining structural clarity.
Throughout the workshop, students will:
Practice block-ins and organizing form
Learn to sketch and restart in clay
Study functional artistic anatomy of the portrait
Develop observational accuracy
Interpret features three-dimensionally rather than symbolically
Begin developing longer, more resolved modeling
The class is designed both as a standalone introduction to portrait sculpture and as a foundation for continued sculpture study. It also directly supports painting and drawing by strengthening spatial understanding, form construction, and visual memory.