Sculptural Works In Progress

Now, the title of this post may seem obvious, but for some reason until this point in time I had believed that soapstone was soapstone was soapstone. Sure, there are different colors from different regions but to me, I had classified the process that made soapstone become soapstone as being the same and yet, that idea is still basically true. However, for whatever reason it is, it never occurred to me that the individual ingredients, if you will, that are involved with its development may vary slightly that will not only change what color the soapstone ultimately becomes, but is also responsible for shifting its hardness composition as well. This only occurred to me when I was recently cutting through two different colored pieces of soapstone for a new project idea I’m developing. One was much, much softer to cut through using the same hand tool than the other. Previously, I had only worked with one stone color at a time, and never had the opportunity to come to this realization that not all soapstone was made equally.

New piece folks. Yes I did finish Unity, well, I finished it mostly enough where it was good enough to photograph for my portfolio. I ended up just calling Linked Rings and I will back post the end results and explanation and all that such, but for the moment I have a new piece idea.

If you haven’t figured out the title of it as yet, it’s 3 Linked Rings or Three Linked Rings; at least that’s the working title of the piece but I can’t really see a reason to change it. I rather like giving my pieces titles that explain pretty much what the piece is. For one, I can keep it all straight in my mind as well as on my computer when I’m viewing the file names as to what I’ll about to be looking at. and secondary it affords me time saved not having to think up some poetic titles.

So I decided on essentially a continuation in the theme of the last piece, but wanted to up the ante by adding one more linked ring to it and making two of the rings free floating. I wanted to sketch this idea out, but I also wanted to utilize a new approach to how exactly. By switching out the medium of pencil and paper, and giving the digital format that I have come so accustomed to in all of the other aspects of my art, I decided to give Google’s SketchUp a try. I had only played around with for about an hour or two maybe a year or more ago and remember a lot of the basics and I am such a quick learner when it comes to computer drawing/design software that I was able to bang out the new idea in about an hour and a half. What I think I love most about the having a virtual 3D Model is that you can spin it around and look at the piece from numerous angles. Had I drawn it out like I normally do, I would have had to have done all the different views and as I said before, no spin factor. So now I have a virtual model from which to sculpt a first maquette from in clay.

Here’s a few images I made from the Digital Model: 

(click on thumbnails for a larger view)

3/4 View of the Digital 3D Model

Top View of the Digital 3D Model

Reverse 3/4 View of the Digital 3D Model

Back View of the Digital 3D Model

Thanks for reading.

Artist Influence #2: Bruce Gray

“Suspension” (40x39x16); The piece consists of super high powered industrial magnets on the ends of the cords, and also on the frame of the circle, to hold the cords taught by magnetic force alone.

I was first introduced to Bruce’s art by way of the show Monster House where he constructed a table for a Retro Future themed house. About 3 years later I came across his art yet again while researching ideas for forms and this piece grabbed my imagination like no other before it and sent me down the path I now travel with my art. Without Bruce’s art, I would not have created some of my favorite pieces to date… and for this I thank Bruce Gray.

Check out Bruce’s art at: Sculpture and Mobiles by Bruce Gray

Wow, so it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog on the progress of the Unity piece, and I wish I could say that I’ve gotten a lot accomplished but that unfortunately isn’t the case. I got hung up by the holidays and that little break kind of broke my motivation a little longer than I wanted it to. As of yesterday I am over my self imposed deadline by two weeks. But that’s the thing with self imposed deadlines… they’re not really deadlines unless you face ill consequences when you miss them. I have however been doing a lot of work on the final piece. I did indeed order a 20 pound block of soapstone and it, along with the next piece’s final block, came about a week before my “deadline”.

Below: The two 20 pound chunks of soapstone.

I stopped all work on the alabaster maquette because it was simply taking me too long to do. Perhaps later I will go back to it, but knowing myself and my pension for not finishing projects, it’s a good chance that’ll never happen. Anywho, I first cut the block to shore it up so it was the size I wanted, but mainly to give me two flat surfaces with which to affix a template of my plan of attack.

Below: Cutting the stone.

After I cut the stone, I did a quick sanding and water polishing on the freshly cut face of the stone to not only give me an idea of what the finished polished stone will look like, but also to see if the stone had any defects in it that might hinder my plans. Most of the stone looked great except for one area where there was a hairline fracture embedded within the stone running from one corner upwards about two thirds of the way but maybe only an inch inwards so it was something I would keep in mind when sculpting that area, but not anything that greatly concerned me enough to deter my attack plan.

Below: The simulated polished stone. (Colors are slightly enhanced by computer software to further bring out defects.

The next step was to create a template of a certain size specifically for this stone and affix it to the stone for tracing. Once that was done on one side, I found the center points of the design and other distinguishing marks so that when I turned the stone over, I could affix the template on backwards and line it up as close as possible. The reason to do this is so I can chisel in half way on one side, and complete the hole of the loops from the other side so I don’t end up missing the back half side of the rock as I did in the plaster maquette. Lesson learned (why we do maquettes!)

Below: Blueprint traced on both faces of the stone.

Then I started chiseling into the rock from one side until I reached the halfway point. I didn’t go more than 3/4 of an inch on the loop overlap for stability reasons and the simple fact that I didn’t really need to have a complete hole at this stage. Another lesson from the plaster maquette. 

Below: The halfway mark is reached on one side of the stone.

Then I flipped the stone over and worked my way back towards the center.

Below: The point at which I broke through the halfway mark wall from side one.

After that I chiseled the rest out and flushed the walls up with my rasp and completed the other loop’s hole as well. I was only off by centimeters which is really quite amazing when manually chipping through rock. Ask any person that tunnels through the Earth… they need machines equipped with GPS and lasers to meet up. Maybe that’s not the best comparison, but whatever, I’m still impressed.

Below: The loops’ holes completed.

So now you’re up to speed on where I’m at. I’ve been taking my time with this one as it’s the final piece and I intend on it being show worthy for my portfolio, so I’m not exactly keen on rushing through it and accidentally breaking it. (Knock on wood) But at the same time I need to hurry it up a bit as I’m not going to have time to photograph & re-photograph my older pieces to put together my visual arts curriculum vitae. (Portfolio)

Until next time,

Thanks for reading.

I guess this post is really born out of what I see that lacks in the world. Every time I go out into an ‘art’ store, there’s plenty of books on drawing and painting, but absolutely nothing on sculpting, unless you want to sculpt dolls and cheap looking polymer clay animals… which is totally fine if you’re not an aspiring 3D fine artist looking to learn how to sculpt and learn simple tips and tricks when working with a budget. And let’s face it, if you’re going to live the life of an artist, you’ll be living on a budget with little room to budge on. ;)

All jokes aside, I want to share what I did when I first started sculpting and needed tools but couldn’t afford to buy all this high priced but essential equipment to get me started.

Tip #1: Stone Carving Chisels

When I first started, I had virtually zero money to buy proper stone carving chisels. I went out to my local mall and found myself wandering around the tool section of Sears and came across a 14 piece metal chisel and tool punch set. Most of them were punches with only 4 being flat chisels of varying sizes. They weren’t perfect, but for a small price of under $20 and knowing I could modify them, it was better than paying over 10 times that amount. I took them home, put the punches of a few different sizes into a vice and grabbed my angle grinder (a bench grinder also works great too) and ground down the flat bottomed punches into point chisels. I also ground down the flat chisels to change the angle of their points to better suit stone carving. These tools were tempered to work on metal, so you don’t have to worry about their strength against stone, so long as you take into account not to grind the metal too long so it loses its tempering. Basically don’t let the metal get hot and glow and you’ll be fine.

The only proper chisel I ever bought was a tooth chisel, and really I got away with not owning one until just recently but they do help you cut down on your carving time. Eventually you’ll probably want to get a weighted hammer as well, but a light metal sledge will work too, just be wary of muscle fatigue.

I have yet to actually buy any other chisels than the ones I modified 6-7 years ago. I went back to check to see if the kind of set I bought then was still available, and while the brand is different, and the price has gone up about $10, the sets are pretty much the same. So if you’re thinking about stone carving and just want to get some inexpensive chisels for it, try this tip out. 

Below are thumbnails of the modified chisels. Please click on them to view them larger.

You can see the first two are unmodified punch chisels, and the last two are modified into point chisels:

A larger point chisel example:

The first chisel is unmodified, with the last two being modified:

Here you can see how I changed the angle of the flat chisels:

And this is the store bought professionally made 3/4” tooth chisel:

So, this hopefully is the first of many sculpting tips I’ll have to offer and help alleviate the lack of sculpting information out there for beginners.

Saturday I ordered the stone for this project and the next project, but instead of getting Alabaster for this piece, I chose to instead use Soapstone for the final sculpt. Why? Well, upon trying to work with the small Alabaster maquette, I was finding the hardness of the stone difficult to work with. I’ve never carved anything quite so hard and compact as Alabaster is. I’ve carved in brick and concrete, but they aren’t as dense and tightly formed since they are man-made ‘stone’. They’re more like binding agents compressed into forms, rather than naturally compressed over millennia from heat and pressure. Seeing how the small sample of Alabaster was taking me incredibly long to cut through… taking up to an hour just to shore up the block into a rectangular shape, I resorted to using a bandsaw to cut through the outer excess of material, which was absolutely like cutting through butter, but that’ll be the only time I can do that as all the other areas of the piece are more delicate.

Thumbnails: 

I tried doing a bit of carving of the maquette, but I’m not liking the results I’m getting with it. So, the stone should be getting here on Thursday, and that gives me around 4-5 days to finish it. That’s too little a timeframe to try to carve in a new material I’m not familiar with and don’t know the limitations to, however I do know I can do it in Soapstone in that time, and so that’s what I decided to do. Stay tuned…

Thanks for reading.

So, now that I’ve finished the 4th maquette (the plaster one) of Unity, it was time to move on to the 4 lb block of Alabaster for maquette #5. I’m actually glad I waited to order a 20 lb block of it because I’m seriously having some doubts about this material being the right stuff for the final piece. I spent just under an hour cutting off a small 4” x 4 1/4” piece off the main block to shore up the block into a rectangle.

I’m thinking I will either do the final piece in soapstone or if this comes out well enough, I might just call it the final piece. The one redeeming quality of alabaster that I really like and might motivate me some, but I’m not sure will motivate me enough, is that translucent property it holds.

Still, it’s too soon to tell, and yet I need to order the stone super soon. I’ve got some work to do this weekend. My deadline for finishing Unity is November 23rd if I want to stay on schedule for applying to grad school. That’s 11 days; cutting it close.

Thanks for reading.

A plus side of Alabaster: Translucent Quality
The glow in the center is from the LED light placed on the top surface of the rock. Amazing Glow.