Enlarging
I have started enlarging one of my small maquettes – the whale head one from the last post. I am only doing it 3 times in size, and as it was only 8cm to begin with, the new piece is still quite small at 24cms.
I was encouraged to enlarge in wax by Helaine on Monday before she left, as I think she is keen for me to try to learn stuff from the foundry. Its working as they have taught me the scale of proportion to use when enlarging. I already knew how to draw 2 lines to help you scale down when you are doing figure sculpture, say 1/2 life or another proportion. But it doesn’t work for enlarging.
To enlarge it is quite easy to construct. On a large sheet or board, you first draw a horizontal line. Then you draw a perpendicular vertical line (around the middle) the height of your original – in my case 8cm. Then, to the right of the sheet, you draw another vertical line – this time the size you want your enlargement – i.e. for me 24 cm. Finally, you draw a line that connect the tops of the 2 vertical lines, and extend it to the left until it crosses your horizontal.
Your scale is now ready to use. Take a measure off you maquette – for e.g. the max width. Mark it on your maquette vertical (the smaller vertical line). Then draw a line from the origine (where the 2 long lines intersect) through the mark on the maquette line, to the sculpture vertical. This then gives you the sculpture’s max width.
So, I am now using this technique, and a new set of beautiful hand made calipers I splashed out and bought from Milani’s, to enlarge my maquette.
I wasn’t sure what Helaine had in mind with the enlargement, but I thought I would try to produce a wax that could be cast directly (i.e. needs to be hollow and not too thick). The other option would be to work in wax on a solid piece but this would then need a mould to be taken of it, before a second wax could be made that would be of the correct thickness.
So, I am making the sculpture out of thin sheets of wax. Raymondo has made me up a modelling wax with some of the brown hard wax added so it is a bit stronger than the normal black modelling wax. I am slowly bending and shapping the sheets, trying to get the subtleties of the original maquette, as well as understanding the complex forms and curves.
I am learning quite a lot about wax and what it is and isn’t capable of. I learn to heat locally with a hairdryer to warm the wax that needs to either be streatched or compressed.
I feel slightly that I am doing something a bit strange and giving myself a mountain to climb to get the subtleties of the original maquette, and its probably not the most efficient and quick way of producing a sculpture, but we will see what I end up with. I started yesterday afternoon, but had to discard that 1/2 days work and start again this morning, having worked out better how to use the sheets of wax. I’d like to finish it by lunchtime on saturday – or at least have it all in place and constructed by then, even if I then work into it again next week… (you can see progress in the final image attached)
At lunch I popped in to the other foundry again, as Julia had told me that the italian girl who is using expanding foam has nearly finished the piece I saw the other day.
It was great meeting her, she is Morgana Orsetta Ghini http://www.mog-art.com
She seems to be very prolific as there are a lot of works on her site. But despite this (or because of?) she has done some really interesting work, using lots of different materials, marble, iron, resin, even watercolour, jewelry, cushions!
I showed her a couple of my wax maquettes (at Julia’s suggestion) and was telling her how I was thinking of enlarging the vulture-like one, about 3 times (Marcello had told me the pantograph only really works accurately 2.5 – 3.5 times). She though I should do it a lot bigger, at least 6 times. Then she said it would look good the size of her piece (over 2m high!) – hmmm, that would be exciting…
