When carving a sculpture out of a block of stone it will be obvious that a lot of stone, will have to be removed. Just removing that stone is not too complicated, and with the right tools that can go very quickly . The point is just to know where it needs to be removed, and usually there is a lot of reduce all the measuring involved (which happens to be not my favorite activity) and that takes the most time.
Nowadays there are of course modern means for that , and I happen to own one, a machine that quite precisely cuts a lot of the shape of the sculpture out of a block of stone.
For my brick layer out of dolomite I have also used this machine, and I must say, already, after just one round of precutting in the rough, the shape begins to take shape. When the diamond cutting is completed, the carving can begin.
First I modeled in plasticine a sketch model for the brick layer. After approval, I enlarged that with compasses and scale calipers in 1:3, in green pir foam. It's a pretty crude sawing model, which I'm going to use to quickly saw the big outlines. Because pir foam is very soft , I coated it with polyester to give it a hard top layer. The next few days I'm going to start cutting and carving. Earlier, I have already split a block of dolomite from which I will carve it. I was originally planning on sculpting the statue in the direct carving method, but this is much faster and easier. But much direct carving work still remains, because this model is not very detailed and slightly too bulky, so I still have a lot of leeway when carving. That keeps it interesting!
