carving question

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Andrei,

Explaining in words can be a bit difficult, but I'll try, firstly, one of
the strangest things about sculpture is the very old adage, if you can draw
it by hand you can probably make it. Half the problem with these kinds of
shapes meeting each other is often not the "U" that you accidentally form
between them but the quality, for want of a better word, of the forms
themselves, they have to look as if they are capable of meeting in the way
that you want. The main problem that I have noticed is that the perceived
weight and effect of gravity can often be very wrong.

Without going into it all in so much detail that it become mind blowingly
prescriptive the best teacher for this topic is Michelangelo himself, a
quick glance at his "so called unfinished" sculptures will give you a
comprehensive impression of how to go about it, don't take any notice of the
sculptures themselves, simply look for the way that he went about making the
kinds of form and their meetings.

What you should see above all else is that he always drew with his chisel
and that he drew, from the very first mark he made in the stone, towards the
meeting points/edges not along them, now the very weirdest thing about
drawing forms and meetings this way is that even when highly finished and
all tool marks have been erased, they seem to retain a memory of how the
were made. Traditionally painters have used the same approach by painting up
to a line, pushing the paint towards an edge as opposed to skidding along
it.

Best lesson, go to your nearest  Art museum and spend some time looking at
the way the shapes that you are interested in were actually done, compare
the various sculptors, look at how painters and drawers achieved their aims,
argue with yourself about the merits of the various approaches.

My simple advice therefore is to draw with a point up to the line from both
directions, then draw with your flat toothed chisel in the same way, over
the form to the meeting point with the other, same again with a flat, same
again with riffler files, in fact going from biggest most brutal tool down
the very finest always looking more at the overall quality of the volumes
and their relationship to each other rather than specifically at their point
of meeting. This method has the huge advantage of allowing you to feel as if
you are actually pushing one volume up to the other, or into it, under it
and so on.

All this leads to one other piece of very traditional advice, work on the
whole sculpture all the time don't try to finish one bit completely before
another, take the whole work up at the same rate and always remember that
you will only see the tiny bit that is giving you problems so force yourself
the see the whole sculpture, as more often than not the thing that is giving
you problems is not the thing that you are going have to fix but something
else near it.

Good luck. Clive
Web: www.cowwarr.com