Transferring design (added color)

Quoted text begins.RE: "What would you use as a colorant? Melted crayons? Candles?"
End of quote.

Though I don't add color often (perhaps one in twenty pieces), I feel
that sometimes adding a nudge of color is good for the design. Most of
the time I work with the actual color of the material contrasting or
complementing the other materials I use in the piece. Sometimes though I
need something beyond the materials at hand, and most often the color
added is something I think the piece might attain eventually with simply
the passage of time -- but not always . . .

I have added color in a number of different ways -- from wood stain to
artist's oil colors, from India ink to spray paint, from pastels to a
natural patina, or sometimes just the color of colored pencil marks or
shoe polish.

Whatever seems to work. When I use spray paint, wood stain, or oil
colors I usually thin or dilute them so they suggest rather than obscure.
I often come back with sandpaper or skotch-brite (synthetic steel wool
without the added oil) and remove some of the surface color and let the
natural stone come through -- but allowing just a hint of whatever tone I
feel it needs.

As they approach the final stages of their carvings, I remind my students
that the great woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons, liked to leave his work the
raw whitish natural color of the limewood (basswood to us Yanks) he
carved. But I also point out that now, if you look at his work, his work
appears at least as dark as a medium-toned wood stain, with the deep rich
patina of age. Did he expect this to happen? I have a feeling he did,
expecting the natural color to darken with time and handling. But do we
in the modern age have the patience to allow the decades to develop our
finish for us? We want it NOW! By judiciously sealing and/or applying
color the carver has a fair amount of control over when and what the
appearance of the work might be. Of course time and entropy will still
claim their due, but perhaps the change will not be so dramatic in the
modern 'rat-race' of our lifetimes.

Recently, in the Aristide Malliol museum, I noticed while looking at a
pair of pieces in marble that one was labeled pink marble and one was
labeled yellow marble. On closer examination however, the two pieces
were obviously white marble that he had carefully tinted with pink and
yellow colorants respectively. One of the two pieces was dated just a
year or so before he died (I don't think the other was dated at all).
Makes you wonder what direction he might have ended-up, doesn't it?

I keep most of my raw stones outside the studio in the weather, and a few
of them I carefully place so they receive the full benefit of even
weathering in a shady area. This allows a gray-green patina to develop
in my climate (middle Georgia, southeastern USA) with relatively high
humidity year round. Mostly algae, but just outside of Atlanta there is
also a fair amount of urban air pollution that adds to it. When I use
those specially 'aged' pieces (usually as a base element to contrast
with the highly worked surfaces of the focal piece), I am extremely
careful to retain the naturally developed patina on selected areas of the
block. And yes, I AM generally a patient person who is willing to wait a
couple of years for the optimum degree of patina -- but then I just work
on something else while I'm waiting.

Good Carving to You,
Don

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