• Four pieces at a time….

    Ov1, PP2, sculpture, vM

    Panipitha

    This past week I spent time working on four different projects at once, all of a different nature. First of all, the work on temperanceblack, square panipeetha just goes on. I've already shaped the top side and started sculpting the last four sides with the Lotus Motif.

    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. Shivalinga+yoni
    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. shivalinga +yoni

    It has been an enormous amount of manual work, especially because I could only polish by hand the rounded profile that lies deep in the middle of the block, and the same was true for a large portion of the top. The hole where the lingam has to go I mainly had to cut with a diamond saw, and because the material is so hard, that was almost a day's work for just the hole! But now it's coming along very nice. In the pictures there is a lot of dust and sludge on it, but the whole upper part is already polished deep black to grit 10.000.

    Nasty the first message over dit Panipitha project.
    Nasty the next post over Panipitha     this project.

    Contract work for others

    Then I have two projects in progress for other sculptors: the previously mentioned tombstone, and a bluestone relief.

    • cutting granite with angle grinder, phase 2
    • splitting a block of stone with drill holes and splitting chisels

    Splitting Dolomite

    Finally, I started modelling, to make a stone statue of a brick layer, about which more later. For that, I also split a block of stone, Dolomite or Anröchter Grünstein. Basically, you need to have special sets of feathers and wedges, but I don't own one (they are also rather pricey, and you would soon need something like 15 of them). But not to worry, I made up my own variant. I bought a set of thin wide chisels out of chrome vanadium. I've noticed that splitting goes fine with those when I insert them into the cut. Because the block is 50 cms thick, I drilled a series of holes with the diamond drill (which goes a lot faster than using a hammer drill), sawed a deep cut on three sides, and 10 chisels in the top cut .

    By then giving each chisel a tap until it's snug, and then hitting every chisel again, back and forth, the stone begins to crack at a certain moment. Just wait a little to give the stone time to crack, hit a few times more, and then it breaks-off splendidly! Also works well with concrete demolition, when there's no rebar in it. I first lifted the block up a bit and inserted a piece of angle iron under it, with the tip of the V pointing upwards, making it break in half nicely down the line.

    To the next post about this dolomite project.

  • A visit to the goat

    sculpture
    1 Reaction

    Last week I picked up a little project I started much earlier.

    Pan, klei, met fluit, schets, granieten beeld

    Occasionally I participate in a tender, but usually the competition for that is quite fierce. That's what I found out a few years ago, when a school in Waalwijk asked for a design for a statue of the faun Pan, after a bronze statue of Pan in front of the school was stolen . I made a small scale model in plasticine, with the idea to carve it in granite.

    Because the design was not chosen, it ended up in a corner, but I still thought it was a droll statue, and decided to enlarge it to 90 cms.

    I enlarged the model out of greenish foam, a kind of easy to work isolation foam, that can be worked quite detailed. But when I got to the legs, I realised I didn't know exactly how goat's hoofs look like.

    Pan fluit beeld graniet

    Luckily there is a petting zoo near my shop, and a goat lives there. A small goat. With permission from the owners (….? What's that crazy sculptor doing near our goat?) I went to the goat in hopes of getting her to leave her den, but she didn't feel much like it. She found me scary, I think.

    Above, my 'best’ photo!

    Pan fluit beeld, gipsmodel voor Pan met fluit, graniet

    But I knew enough, and I wasn't far off. I ahd of course been near a goat before (though I do think she's in need of another pedicure…). And luckily there's always the internet, with an incredible database of images.

    After that I went to work with plaster. There is still a lot of work to do, but I enjoy it, because it could become quite a cheerful sculpture for somewhere in a garden . I can already imagine it in red granite.

    To the next post about this project.

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