• Precarving the stone street worker

    sculpture, vM
    for chopping stratenmaker 1

    Today I made good progress with the precarving of my sculpture of the paver. It is about 80 cms tall, out of green dolomite. After the pre-cutting with the saw machine I am now carving the rough outlines, detailing will follow later.

    A precut sculpture does have the right volumes, but due to the limitations of the machine, there is still a lot of measuring work, chiselling and sawing work to be done. Fortunately, that has become a lot easier because already a lot of reference points are clear.

    For clarification: to the left the stone statue, to the right the sawing model.

    dolomite image of road worker; phase 2: precarving in the rough

    I approach this sculpture to a large extent via the direct carving method: the portions that have not yet been shaped I actually carve without measuring too much, and especially the details, which I also didn't define in the clay sketch and the pir foam model, I'm carving freehand. That will make it a lively sculpture, and I find the process enjoyable because while carving I encounter’ all kinds of small 'problems' and coincidences . I noticed that while doing that the cogs of the learning process were busily turning again.

    Actually, the light under my tent is not ideal, and that shows in this picture. Now that is actually beneficial on this blog, that way it remains a bit of a surprise, but for carving, I would prefer a slightly cloudy day without a tent. The tent flattens all shades, so everything is not sharply defined anymore. Sculpting is actually shaping with shadows, so tomorrow I will go out from under the tent. Too bad it'll later get towards 30 degrees Celsius!

    Direct, bright sunlight actually doesn't work well either, and that is the reason that the statue sits on a turntable. That way I can turn it in the best position, but most of all, I can turn it toward the best light.

    After all that granite sculpting I have to looking for new glass in my spectacles, because the current have actually become more of a starry sky and that hinders visibility severely. But despite these small obstacles this one already is a very nice little sculpture, and also the carving itself on this sculpture is a very pleasant pastime. I will keep you informed of the developments!

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  • 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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