• A thorough dislike of measuring

    background, vanH, coat of arms

    Long live the copyshop! The title of this post is obviously a bit exaggerated. A sculptor in stone can't avoid taking measurements every once in a while.

    • coat of arms, family crest carved in Elm wood, coat of arms relief
    • I really don't like having to remember numbers. There must be another way

    How to avoid measuring

    calipers

    There are several ways in which I try to avoid that I should measure with a tape measure when I have to copy or enlarge something. For example, while carving my previous sculpture, 'Ferns’, I made the model in a scale of 1 at 4 when he. From that I took the sizes with a compass, which I then 'walked' four times across the piece of stone, so there would be no digits to convert. Whenever I needed to convert sizes with a calculator, or out of my head, or just needed to measure and reproduce something, I'd sometimes already forgotten the numbers once I'd stepped away from my model. So then I have to get back, measure again, remember, and measure on the new piece, draw the measurements, etc.. I once did that, in the beginning, and soon got tired of it. Hence the compass. Or calipers, or pointing machine, or…. but no, I'm not going to tell all my tricks. In any case I like it if I don't need to think too much, and when the measuring process takes as little attention as possible. Sorry, but sometimes I think I'd rather be lazy than tired.

    Reliefs

    It's even easier for reliefs. Just ake a picture in the correct size, lay that on the stone, and transfer it to the stone. Then all I need to do is carve it out, easy as that. Of course I won't tell you all the tricks I've discovered over the years. But the main trick is that of course I'm not going to magnify such a picture with grids. Or print on A4 sheets and stick them together with adhesive tape. I emailed the picture to the copy shop, and they enlarged it to about 120 cms, and Koen is done.

    Day 1

    day1-2

    So today I started carving the coat of arms of the family Van Heeckeren. After cutting the slab of sandstone round and transferring the image I've made a start with the profiled edge. Also, I put three loose lifting anchors in the background material of the stone, for a round stone is very hard to hoist properly. Imagine it happening, it's all finished and slips out of the slings! We can't have that. So I put in two lifting pins just above the center. They're drilled slightly upwards , so they clamp themselves, and for horizontal lifting, there is a third pen at the bottom. Finally, I started ‘jig sawing‘ the relief, so I no longer need to measure a lot of things!

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  • Direct carving vs indirect carving

    background
    2 comments

    Direct carving

    However much I like to find my way through the stone while carving, it's not always the most convenient way of working, especially when working a large piece. The advantage of the direct carving method is that your thoughts about the shape are growing along with the shape itself, and that you might work a little more directly.

    And, such as Bob Ross said: ‘We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents’. Every now and then through a little 'mistake’ you'll be forced to change your mind a bit, and apart from teaching you to be flexible and inventive, it can actually sometimes produce something unexpectedly positive. The disadvantage is that it can be a very time-consuming way of working, especially in complex work. You're constantly trying to find solutions, and in stone that is not easy. Another disadvantage is that any real mistake in stone will be irreparable. When carving a sculpture of 2 metres 30 tall you don't want to end up there.

    Indirect carving

    auguste-rodin-in-atelier. Indirect carving
    the studio of Auguste Rodin

    Hence, already in antiquity, sculptors would make a model out of clay, and took their measurements from that in order to carve out the larger work. But having a a clay model right next to a sculpture that you're carving is just not practical. One shard splitting off wrongly and your clay model is unsusable. So they used to make a casting in plaster, which they used as a model for carving. This led to the point where other sculptors were able to perform the precarving work. This way Auguste Rodin for example had a whole studio full of assistants, who precarved his statues based on his models, after which the master himself put the finishing touches to it (sometimes just his initials). They used a full-size model and took the measurements with a pointing machine.

    Combining the two methods

    slose up van punteerapparaat, hulpmiddel voor taille indirecte in steen en hout

    In this sculpture, I tried to combine the best of both methods by carving a model out of Pir foam in the direct method, which I now use as a model for the large sculpture. And because I work with relatively few points, there always remains a very large part of the shaping process on the final stone sculpture.

    The dolomite in which I carve this is a nice stone to work with. I'm carving in it for the first time ever, and noticed that it is not too hard (slightly less hard than Belgian bluestone), but somewhat layered though. It still looks a bit greyish now, but once you have fine sanded it, or wet it, or put it in oil, the greenish colour comes out clearly. When it's finished, it's time to decide for the best treatment to get it soft green, with a few test pieces. If the sculpture would stand outside, it would become greener all by itself, but it's intended for indoors. And yes, as you can tell: it remains dusty work. Fortunately, I have a good dust protection.

    And yes, as you can tell: it remains dusty work. Fortunately, I have a good dust protection.

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