Since time out of mind, people have marveled at the mysterious Mona Lisa smile. Lovers of painting have reported for centuries that her smile changes before your eyes, as if she were a living person. These notes present a straightforward mathematical explanation of how Leonardo’s famous sfumato technique actually works. In all most cases IContinue reading “That Mona Lisa Smile”
Author Archives: Peter Coates
Many Kinds of Realism
In an earlier post we talked bruises in marble, which are the bane of modern marble sculptors. They’re like a pimple on your sculpture’s nose and there is no effective makeup for marble. Surprisingly, bruising wasn’t an issue for the ancients. In fact, as we’ll see in a different post, the available carving techniques priorContinue reading “Many Kinds of Realism”
Bruising Marble
This posting went almost unseen when I first put it up, six months ago, so after reworking it a little I’m re-posting it. The changes are cosmetic so if you feel like you’ve seen it before you probably have. If you carve marble or alabaster you know about bruising. I’m talking about the indelible milkyContinue reading “Bruising Marble”
The Figure #11: Every Disaster Is An Opportunity
What an ominously Pollyanna-ish title! So here’s what’s going on. I’ve been chewing away at the stone, stripping off the thickest areas to make it easier to drill down to a denser array of points. In a few areas I’ve gone a step farther and taken it all the way down, leaving just enough forContinue reading “The Figure #11: Every Disaster Is An Opportunity”
The Figure #10: Pointing and Carving!
It took a while to get here, but we’re finally carving marble. The process is to use a pointing machine to locate key points on the plaster model and then transfer them to stone using a pointing machine. There’s a video below of setting it up and starting the carving on the figure. The PointingContinue reading “The Figure #10: Pointing and Carving!”
The Figure #9: From Full-Size Clay To Plaster
Finally, the model is complete. Actually, the full-size model has been complete for while but now there’s a video to go with it so I can do this post. It’s all hammer and chisel from here on out. In the last episode we saw the construction of the full-size armature from the small scale originalContinue reading “The Figure #9: From Full-Size Clay To Plaster”
The Figure #8: Enlarging the Armature
The last post was about setting up the enlarging machine. In video below it gets used for the first time to create the Styrofoam armature for the full size piece. The object is to create a big chunk of styrofoam that’s half an inch to one inch smaller than the finished clay. It’s not anContinue reading “The Figure #8: Enlarging the Armature”
V1.0 Of The Figure Did Not Go To Waste After All
Version one of the model for the figure carving wasn’t quite what was needed. I’d made a mold before deciding to rework it but I’d never poured it. The clay popped out of the mold almost unharmed so it was easy to rework the aspects I didn’t like. I liked the placidity of her postureContinue reading “V1.0 Of The Figure Did Not Go To Waste After All”
A Figure In Stone #7: Setting Up to Enlarge
The video for this really says it all so I’ll keep this text to a minimum. I’ve posted a few times about the enlarging machine but this is the first time I’ve actually set it up to use it. This one is physically setting it up on the bench. In the next one I’ll actuallyContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #7: Setting Up to Enlarge”
A Sculpture Enlarging Machine Part 2
This post is technical details about how the enlarging machine is constructed. It may not make much sense if you haven’t checked out part one where we introduced the sculpture enlarging machine. There aren’t a lot of designs for these things floating around the Internet but I did find some photos and there were aContinue reading “A Sculpture Enlarging Machine Part 2”
Sculpture Tech 