A maquette is a scale model made as an initial draft to help planning before starting a sculpture. It is used to help to visualise the overall form, plan the proportions and add details. It can be a rough model or it can be actual size or a scale model of the final piece. It is best not to scale up or down too much if it is being used to create exact measurements as it can lead to inaccuracies (perhaps no more than X2).
When I first started to learn about woodcarving I was encouraged to use maquette, but in my enthusiasm to carve I did not make the time to make maquette and just got on with my carving using images in my head, my drawings or photographs as source material. This I think was most significant beginners mistakes I made in my early carving days.
These days I always make maquette for complex or unfamiliar forms. They are always worth the time and effort and make carving easier, faster and more accurate. There are many ways of making maquette. I make mine from plastercine supported on a wooden base. The plastercine can be formed and reformed repeatedly improving the proportions and finalising the relationship between components and the details. As plastercine can be both added and removed (unlike wood carving) it can be used to refine and develop ideas and as the basis of discussion with friends, tutors, or those placing a commission with you. Maquettes are important in commissioned pieces to help to finalise the the form with a client, aid clear communication and ensure that the client is happy with the final sculpture. You also get to keep the maquette when a sculpture goes to its final home as a unique record of the piece. I am thinking about doing some maquettes in clay to create a more permanent record.
Making a maquette
To make a maquette I start by mounting a piece of dowling onto a wooden block. The size of the block and dowling depend on the size of the maquette that I am making. In this example I used 10mm diameter dowling. The length of the doweling depends on the height of the maquette. I then drilled a 10mm hole into a left over piece of wood with dimensions 7cmX 5cmX 5cm. It just needs to be big enough to make the maquette stable.
Then I glued the Dowling in place with wood glue and left it to dry overnight.
I then stuck drawing pins into the dowling to make it easy to apply the plastercine securely so that it will not twist around as I make the maquette.
Before starting to model with the plastercine I usually warm it overnight in the airing cupboard or in hot water (not in the microwave, this can go wrong!), knead it and apply it to the dowling post. Think about the dimensions of the the final piece and of the maquette and add enough plactercine to create the overall shape.
You can then start to model it with clay / plastercine modelling tools, kitchen utensils or modelling tools you have made yourself.
It is well worth taking your time with the modelling, refining and improving it until you are satisfied that it is right. I often create a maquette starting from a photograph or drawing and then make it over several days, building and rebuilding it. I measure the dimensions to make sure that they are correct and then model the details. The advantage of working over several days is that you can take long breaks and then return with a fresh eye and then adjust the maquette. It is also worth looking at it from different angles – front, sides, above etc. so that you have all around accuracy. It is surprising how direct things can look from different angles. A face can look right when viewed from straight on, but the nose may not be long enough when viewed from the side. You should also think about where the final piece will be displayed and viewed from as this changes the perspective. Many human figure sculptures in churches as mounted high on the walls and will be viewed from below. Consequently the feet should be carved a bit smaller and the face a little larger than normal to talk account of the effect of distance.
As a last thought, always work in good light, daylight is best for this kind of work.
Scaling Up and Down
If your maquette is the same size as the final sculpture (1:1) then transferring the dimensions onto a piece of wood is very simple. However maquette are often smaller than the final woodcarving and so scaling up is necessary. There are many ways of doing this. I frequently take a simple mathematical approach. For example, if my maquette is 2/3 of the size of the final sculpture then I will need to increase all dimensions e.g. maquette height 6cm : final woodcarving height 9cm, maquette width 4cm: final woodcarving width 6cm. The positions of all the features will be scaled in the same way. To calculate these you can take the final woodcarving height and divide by the maquette height to gain the scale i.e. 9/6=1.5 The scale is 1:1.5 Each dimension needs to be increased by multiplying by 1.5.
This principle can be applied to any scaling e.g. if the maquette height is 9.4cm and you want the final woodcarving height to be 15.2cm then the scale is 15.2/9.4=1.6, and so all dimensions need to be increased by multiplying by 1.6
The same idea can be applied to scaling down.
There are other ways of scaling up and down. I sometimes use a printer to increase or decrease the size of images used for relief carving. Be careful with images for carving in the round as dimensions may the distorted.