Thank you, Jyl, for sharing your technique. I will now get some engraving points. May the sun shine through your brilliant tribute to Athena for a thousand years.
I sometimes see people sharing images of old statues where the figure appears to be covered in material. People assume this is exceptionally hard but while it’s a lovely effect I always imagine that its actually more forgiving than carving the features that the material is covering. That said, I'm not an expert so there could be something I’m missing. The details in this video suggest that I’m on the right track though. If you messed up those hands, you have potentially ruined the sculpture. If they were covered with material then you might mess up a crease in the fabric but then you could more easily reimagine how the creases in the fabric are falling.
How do you Guage how thin a protruding/floating peice of stone can be before it easily can break (ie during transit.) I understand the risk during the actual carving but once carved I'm not sure how delicate something like fingers would be. I just saw "zenobia in chains," that seemed highly unlikely to not have broken
That's a great question. Webbing is left in place for transit and removed upon arrival for fingers, arms and legs depending on the pose. My webbing will stay in place for awhile because the sculpture will keep moving to different exhibitions. To gauge when something will break requires experience, however, anything 1 inch or less thick is very breakable. I hope that's helpful to you.
It's the unforgiving nature of stone sculpture that amazes and terrifies me. You take a little bit too much off in one place and you've ruined the whole sculpture. Somehow you have to know and experience the body you are sculpting from the inside - the flesh, the blood, the bones, the sinews . . .
Proportion is all wrong. When you sculpt in marble you do not sculpt reality rather you sculpt the Ideal. Between these two even the slightest tendency towards the Ideal reveals the essence of sculpting in marble.
