A Marble Work In Progress

The stone in my outdoor carving studio.

July 7, 2007

I pull out my diamond edged saw and I start to chunk off some of the bigger pieces that I want to remove from the stone.
I'll put a bunch of parallel cuts next to each other and an inch apart.

There aren't a lot of direct carvers. I have an idea and I look at the stone and carve directly into the stone and let the stone partially dictate what happens. Most people make a model and someone else does their carving from their model to the stone. It's not a direct carving.

I think there's more freedom. You get to respond to the stone. Michelangelo carved like this. He's on record as having to respond to problem spots in stone…change of pose.

July 17, 2007

This can be dangerous to the stone, but it's all a little dangerous. At this stage you can redraw your idea if something unplanned happens. It's still fixable now, but no one wants to abandon an original idea.

Now there's a line which follows the contour of the body. What I did was chisel off the little fingers of marble that I had cut with the saw. It makes it so much easier to move marble because you get about an eighth of an inch at a time if you don't score it first. If you score it you can pop off about a half inch at a time. It's a good way to enter the stone fast. There's no sense in hanging back.

I'm taking my small saw and making some slices into the piece like I did last time. Then I'm going to use the pneumatic chisel and take off the sides.
 

This part is a little dangerous to the stone, but you can mess up the stone in the finish if you're not careful. It's all a little dangerous and at this stage you could take off a chunk you didn't plan on taking off and just redraw your idea. It's terrible if you break it at this stage, if you wanted to stick to your original idea, but it's at the stage where you can re-do things. It's fixable right here.

July 24, 2007

July 29, 2007

This is the new drawing on the front of the stone. It can't help being slightly different, but it retains the over all feel of the first drawing. I don't think the waist is as narrow in this drawing...something I will change in the next drawing.

That's the pneumatic chisel. I am beginning to put some form to the front of the piece. I'm starting to do the belly. It's the very beginning of cutting in front of the stone. One of the reasons that I like to do this is so the drawing on the front stays as long as possible. I cut the sides to match the front drawing and then work on the back to balance between the forms back and forth, front to back. Having them play off of each other works really well for me

She's taking shape. I'm beginning to see that I'm going to get what I wanted. Sometimes that's in question all the way up to this stage.

August 2, 2007

I have carved the drawing off again. At this point I'm taking off the chisel marks. There are only a few left around the collar bone. I'm using a large grinder with a large carbide grinding wheel tip. I've gone past all of the rougher tools

August 3, 2007

August 6, 2007

There's a refining process at this stage. I use the big grinder to take off the chisel and saw marks. The saws and the chisels leave marks in the stone and I have to be careful to not use the tools too close the figure. In this drawing you can see there's a quarter to a half inch around the drawing of marble that still needs to come off. All of that will come off with the big grinders. I won't use the chisels again.

I'm applying a great deal of pressure. I have strong hands and I'm pushing. I switch back and forth between hands. I thnk I'm stronger holding it in my right hand than pressing with my left, but I do go back and forth.

I'm going to go to tools that are the size of my little finger tip. We're about to head into the fine tool period.

The big part of learning to use these tools is how to control them. Every tool I use could go right though the middle of the stone pretty easily. I could use this grinder and start in the thick part of the stone and it would take me less than an hour to go all the way through. A big part of is the delicacy and the holding back while I'm carving. It becomes demanding phsyically because it's hard work but that's where the intellectual part comes in. I have to keep in mind where I want it to go and I really have to hold myself back because the tools I'm using are so powerful.

I've taken the drawing off again. Sometimes I take off two or three drawings in a single day. I've also been working on her neck and collar bones and her belly.

August 22, 2007

There's a lot of refinement. You can see the refined lines in the belly. You can see the hip marks. All of the lines I put on at this stage are directions to me as the sculptor. They are fun for me if I'm asked questions about them because they don't make sense to anybody but the sculptor.

The front is much more finished, but then the front is where the most detailed drawings were. You can see the back is still quite big. The thighs are very big. What I like to do is work on one side of the stone and pull it in close to where it's going to end up and then work off of what I've just carved...where the front pulls into the back. I work them off of each other.

I'm making her lose a little weight in her upper thighs and butt. The only way to do that is by grinding. Half of what I do when I'm grinding might look like a mystery. All I can say is wait till you see it at the end.

I am still drawing. Until it is a finished piece, I will continue to draw

I'm studying the drawings. I'm deciding where I'm going to touch her next. I generally have five places all at the same time that need work. I'm deciding in what order and how far I'm going to take each of those spots. I want to move in slowly.

This is a smaller version of the grinder. It's not the long one. I'm using both the tip and the sides. This one has a smaller tip so I can go into smaller places like between her bun and her thigh, for a finer line.

I'm doing an overall shape. I haven't put hip bones in yet or detailing thighs and even though the thighs will be heavy and columnar they still have to have real detail in them.

This is the first step of putting the personality in the piece. Until now she has just been a roughed out pleasant female figure. Now it's the little things, my awareness of anatomy that will show up. She will turn into an individual in the next couple of weeks.

I'm going to take some more off of her butt. What that is going to do is delinate between the lower gluteal region (which is the bun) and her hip. They're not the same thing. They're two different regions. They're going to be joined but they will be two separate units

She has really been pulled in….the hips and the size of the butt which is no longer squared off side to side. The buns have been pulled around the back of the form and now her buns are behind her, not out to the sides. When there's just a squared off form the buns go out to the outside edge. There's a huge amount of work removing marble to get to this place.

I'm going to do more work on the legs. They'll be pulled in at the bottom. I will do more work on the arm but I have pretty much gotten to the place where I'm going to stop sculpting with tools and I'm going to all files and sandpaper.

These are the files. When I reach this point, I like to file the surface down, getting rid of as many tool marks as I can, pulling the stone into an almost finished place so that I can see what I've done.

I like filing. The neck is rounded. There are collar bones and neck muscles that didn't exist just moments before

I can get more power in the stroke when I stand. I'm using my whole body when I'm standing, my legs are involved.

When I'm filing the goal is to take off the tool marks. You can still see tool marks on the back. There are high and low points in the form. The important thing is to go to the low, the hollow spot in the form. When I file I have to think about not just filing the points smooth, but filing so that I'm not taking off parts of the form I want to leave.

The file crosshatches. I go one way for a while and then back the other way. If I'm careful I take off just the tops of the forms without going into the valleys. That's why a file is better than sandpaper at this point. With a file, I have a rigid piece of metal with tiny teeth. When I hold a piece of sandpaper, it's very flexible, even the stiff 36 grit sandpaper I use.

The metal of the file is much better at giving a consistent surface. I go back with sandpaper and the sandpaper goes over and around the tops of the forms and into the valleys at a much different level than the file. I can't really get a good form with sandpaper. I have to get the form with the files and then go back again and do the surface with the sandpaper

September 10, 2007

I never stop drawing.
I want to bring the surface to another level. I can still see lots of tool marks. She is approaching finished. This is what I was looking for inside the stone. The front view is almost exactly what the first drawing looked like.

One of the reasons I like this piece is that this woman is independent but still a bit modest and a little vulnerable. I think that speaks volumes about femininity. It's not just her beautiful body, it's the attitude of the piece that is feminine

September 18, 2007

The sanding sometimes surprises me because the forms get their final set with the roundness and the junction between forms. The detail gets its final sanding and the piece itself takes on another dimension because there's this remarkable skin-like quality that happens. There's something special about the final form. This is what I've been working up to….that when I see it happening it's a surprise. Even though this is what I were looking for, this is what I expect. I can't see it until I'm doing the final sanding on the piece.

The surface is becoming very skin-like. It's still a stone and it's still a lot of work. I go through a lot of sandpaper.

This is my grip...one finger on top of the other so you can press down extra hard.

September 25, 2007

I am still working on where the bottom of the legs and the thighs meet the base. I'm pretty much done with the whole top of the piece. I've still got a little sanding. I want to take it to 50 from 36 grit.
She's very matte finish, even though you can see the pink and the marbleizing  of the finish.  I'm pulling in the very bottom of the thighs, just a little bit. They still look like tree trunks to me.

I want to work on that thigh in general. I am determined not to touch the bun. That's what the pencil marks are for.

It's a little like magic. How the hell did it get to this from where I started?

The final week of working on the stone puts all of the personality on the piece. Getting a perfect little torso is not so hard to do but when I put my own mark on the piece so that it has its personality...that could have only come from my fingers. Then it's really my piece of work. I don't think that happens until the last little bit of sanding. That's when I finally turn the corners of the forms.

Look at how the thighs are pulled in at the bottom. The actual form has been pulled in on itself. There is less of it.

This is the marbleizing in the stone. Some people refer to them as "flaws." I like them as the marbleization in the stone. I don't consider it a flaw.

I'm pulling in the bottom of the thigh.

You can see from the angle of the finger that I'm pressing pretty hard.

I'm checking the surface. Sometimes it's easy feel  imperfections with the fingertips.

mike.leckie@gmail.com