I have done a number of commissions over the years. It is a very different process to carving for an exhibition of carving because I have an idea that I want to develop and explore. It starts when I am approached and asked if I will carve a specific form or a particular piece of wood.
My favourite was a beautiful piece of wood from the branch of a tree that the customers mother had been very fond of. The wood had been found in the attic recently, could I make anything from it. We looked at many pieces of sculpture to help me understand the customers likes and dislikes.
I then made a plastercine maquette of an abstract sculpture based on the shape of the wood and thinking about the relationship between the customer and the mother. I invited the customer to come and view it and discuss the details and some possible options and the limitations and characteristics of the wood. I gave the customer a quote and time to think about the project.
Once all was agreed and a 50% deposit paid I started to carve the form, this was very daunting. It was a unique piece of wood that I could not replace if anything went wrong. When I am doing a commission there is the additional pressure of meeting the customers expectations. I try to manage this carefully by making a maquette and discussing aspects of the sculpture in advance. You cannot be sure of exactly what you will find inside a piece of wood in terms of cracks and imperfections that might alter the course of a carving. I invited the customer in a couple of times to see the carving as it progressed and to discuss details of the finishing process.
Once completed, oiled and waxed the commission was ready for its final viewing, payment and then to go to its new home. So far customers have loved the work I have produced for them, and for me a great sense of relief of completing a commission successfully.
My last few posts have been about carving a wave form from the start of an idea, making it in plastercine, carving it in lime and applying oil and wax to finish. I have called the piece Ocean Wave. I guess it will evoke different memories for different people. For me the Mobius strip at the centre reminds me of the welling strength of the sea when we went surfing as children, and sitting listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves on the shore.
Make a maquetteand refine itPrepare a templateDraw it on and start to block out the shapeand continue roughly forming the shapeDevelop the waveRefine the spiralImprove the shape and finishApply oil and wax
Before I start to carve I often make templates from my maquette and scale them to fit the wood that I am going to carve. For this carving I drew around the base of the maquette and drew the outline from the side. The maquette needed scaling up by x1.8 so I used my printer to make a 180% copy the drawing. Then I cut the outlines out to make the templates.
The templates allow me to transfer the outline shape accurately onto the wood. Then I can quickly carve the outline shape and redraw it on if I carve away the outline.
They look a little weird, but allow me to remove surplus wood quickly and efficiently.
I have been thinking about the forms I want to use in this wave sculpture for a while now. I really like the sea and the work of Barbara Hepworth.
I often develop my initial ideas in plastercine. It allows me to keep developing ideas as I go along, even once carving has started. This is a scale model of what I am going to carve, about half the final size. The Mobius strip is fine and I like the rolling nature of the wave form. I am less sure about the left hand side (it reminds me of a slug on this model), to I may play around with that over the next day or two. It is important to get this right as it will affect the initial cutting of the outline of the shape in wood and once this is done I will be committed to a certain shape.
I like the Mobius strip as a form, its sense of flow, the way it creates light and shade within a sculpture and the symbolism relating to love and infinity. Creating a wave from the edge if the strip works well and gives a sense of energy and the power of the sea. I nice combination of ideas.
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.
