A brief overview of methods we employ
Design
New ideas initially take shape through photos and sketches. This is the fastest way to explore different ideas and to clarify the direction of the piece.
Create
These designs are often carried out in clay. We use either oil-based clay, which always remains the same consistency and cannot be fired, or water-based clay, which dries out and can then be fired. Firing a piece of terra cotta is a possible finished state for a sculpture.
Taylor working in water-based clay
Portrait in oil-based clay
Cast
Alternately, the wet clay sculpture could be cast into a plaster version. There are a few ways to do this. A plaster waste mold is a quick and cost-effective way to make a plaster copy, but it cannot be re-used (hence ‘waste’ mold). Making a rubber mold is a more drawn-out, expensive process, but the rubber mold can reproduce multiples.
A rubber mold can also be used to create castings in fiberglass resin or wax. A wax casting can then be used to cast a bronze at a foundry.
A rubber mold of a relief
A plaster waste mold
Waste mold is chipped away to reveal plaster copy
Evan touches up a wax casting in preparation for bronze
Translate
Plaster model and block of marble with pointing machine
Sometimes the plaster or terra cotta version is just a model intended to serve as a reference for a marble sculpture. A model can serve purely as a visual guide or it can be copied precisely using a tool called a pointing machine. The pointing machine allows you to translate points on the model to corresponding points on the stone.
Plaster model and marble copy
Enlarge
An older version of this method used compasses (calipers) to triangulate points in a similar way. Though less precise than the pointing machine, one advantage of using compasses is that you can enlarge a model rather than just translate it at the same scale.
While compasses give you a basic structure, using one’s eye is still critical
Direct Carving
The process of clay to plaster to marble is analogized by Italian carvers as “the birth, the death and the resurrection.” This is because the clay version has the hand of the sculptor in it, whereas the plaster is a copy and is also a duller material. Marble is the most beautiful material of the three and requires the most work but can be finished to the highest degree.
Following this process all the way through can produce fantastic results, but it is extremely labor-intensive. Sometimes it is better to carve directly, meaning without a reference model. Direct Carving can use drawings and photos as references or it can be done entirely from imagination. This is a much faster process, but all the decisions the sculptor makes are final. You can achieve a very fresh, lively result in exchange for the predictability of working from a model.
Using compasses to measure points on a marble block
Evan Copies Portrait into Marble
A brief glimpse of the process of carving a marble copy from a plaster bust using the pointing machine. The plaster model was sculpted by Amanda Sisk. The project was completed at the Carving Studio & Sculpture Center in West Rutland, Vermont.