relief carving

Quoted text begins.RE: Oscar Bearinger wrote: "Any tips about relief carving, folks?"
End of quote.

Oscar,

Though I have done only a bit of relief work myself in stone (not too
much representational work in that medium), but I have done numerous
relief sketches in clay modelling from life. I have worked with a number
of students over the years who have attempted relief in either clay,
stone, or wood. I am sure they would all tell you it is much more
difficult than a fully 3D piece, because of the distortion of form needed
to create the depth of illusion.

I have found one of the best ways to help the student to conceptually
grasp the needs and requirements of design in relief is to share the
chapter "Modelling in Relief" from the 1948 book The Sculptor's Way by
Brenda Putnam (recently re-published by Dover).

Perhaps the single most helpful parts of the chapter for the novice are
the diagrams showing what she calls 'telescoping.'
The process of 'telescoping' from a full half-in-the-round (high-relief
or haut-relief) to a thin bas-relief illustrates the differences between
internal relationships in the actual form of the model and the illusion
of relief form.
She does this by comparing several cross-sections of a head in relief,
over which is drawn a reference grid.
The first is a cross-section of a half-head in profile on the background,
over which the grid is laid out in squares.
The second shows the same head but proportioned half as thick, with the
corresponding grid in rectangles twice as high as they are wide.
The third diagram shows the cross-section of the same head proportioned
in one-quarter (bas-relief), with the corresponding grid squares four
times as high as they are wide.
The 'telescoping' of form necessary to the creation of a successful
relief that these diagrams visually illustrate seems to be the primary
conceptual jump-point that allows the student to grasp the concept and
understand at a gut-level what they are trying to achieve in relief.

She also has a half-dozen photo-reproductions of different stages in
modelling a portrait profile in relief - one of which shows her 'top-ten'
list of common mistakes in relief work. In addition, she addresses the
issues of working specific problems in depicting the limbs in relief.

Though she describes the stages of modelling relief through the medium of
clay, in the text she addresses approaches of making the clay relief
specifically as a model for a subsequent carving (at one point she
writes, "remember you are a carver here"), and discusses general issues
she feels pertinent to carving techniques.

Other than sharing the Putnam chapter, the one piece of advice I always
seem to be giving my students addresses the idea of foreshortening: "the
closer the portion of the form to your eyes, the greater the relative
height in the relief." This seems so obvious to me, but is one of the
areas most (of my) students have the greatest difficulty in accepting as
a given imperative.

Good Carving to You,
Don

http://www.dondoguan.com