Change of plan.....The piece of alabaster didn't feel quite right for this carving, so looking through the college store of stones, I found this bit of soapstone which is black with little flecks of white and should look lovely when polished. It's quite narrow, so I'll use the last maquette as the main source, and possibly elongate the face on the stone. I made a start on the rough shaping, rounding one of the facets and starting to saw off a piece to form the chin. Ran out of time so will have to finish that bit next week.
And several maquettes later, plus rough eye carvings on alabaster offcuts..... and I'm wondering just why am I doing this????? The slab of alabaster I had for this carving was rather narrow, flat on one side and sort of convex on the other, so my first idea was to carve a profile portrait in relief. In May 2016 at the Affordable art Fair in Hampstead, I'd seen a couple of sculptures I liked by John Huggins, where the heads were narrow at the front, widening out at the back. Then in late 2016 I saw Picasso's portrait 'Jacqueline with a Yellow Ribbon' (Picasso's Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery). This is painted on metal, almost flat with one side having just a suggestion of three-dimensional features. I was particularly interested in the way one profile showed the eye full-on as in Egyptian paintings, while the other side was the more anatomically correct side view. More interesting head carvings found online (above). Another maquette is called for!
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AuthorI started writing this blog in December 2016, but it covers projects started in spring 2015 onwards, so it was written retrospectively until I caught up with the current term. Archives
December 2019
CategoriesUseful sites
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