The halfway point of a sculpture is like swimming to the middle of the ocean… you are not quite sure where you are, either shore equally too far off, but you go forward to the shore you don’t know and away from your starting point.

From here I need to consider the surface finishing of this – color texture pattern adornment – I thought about plaster, because it seems so malleable and still stone-like, and I made a small bozzetto to try it and remembered what a pain plaster is to get upright on a surface. It is really only best for molding.

I made the model and it turned out exactly like the foam figure, which tells me  two things – that the plaster doesn’t bring me any closer to the finished surface, but on the other hand, the foam piece is done and nothing needs to be added to it.

The foam core of this Buddha is nearly finished, a few cavities to patch and some sanding to smooth and even out the surface. The clear and present direction to f\go forward with is what I started out to do; cover it with masking tape and then paper mache. I won’t use the “paper clay” recipe from another project. It is too messy like plaster to re-work, and anyway making large batches of the stuff is a chore.