EPTThis blog is documenting the sculpting of my marble immortal.
I don't want to post a blog every other day. I'd rather have an ongoing documentation and get the comments in one place, so I'm going to edit this blog and post new pics whenever I have something to report. I reversed the order of the updates, so that the newest pics are always on top. If you want to follow the original story, start at the end.
Substantial text in blog replies:
How to "see" a sculpture in a stone
13-11-08, 70h total
This old thread stopped being updated by my bumps, please check out the new thread for further pics!
13-10-26, 62.5h total
I put in some more hours with the Dremel yesterday and today. I worked on detailing and correcting proportions of the torso and shoulder/gun areas. Also did some smoothing down of surfaces. I'm getting somewhere, but there's so much work left in this guy...
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qx2HQ36.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DUp2PGR.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JclUtXb.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9EUwgVi.jpg)
13-10-20, 55h total
So, weekly updates, right? Those of you who have been following my other blog entries might remember I presented this business idea for a shared workshop in early summer. Basically, me and my wife spent a lot of time on defining and refining that over the whole summer. We were basically at the point where we just would have had to go to a bank and try a startup loan. Since however my wife now scored a very good job elsewhere, we put those plans into deep freeze storage and might revisit them in a couple of years or so.
With some spare time back on my hands, I promised myself I'd finish the Immortal this year. Okay, at least the sculpting part, I'll see about polishing when I get there.
I switched over to working with my Dremel tool with diamond-coated routing bits. Using it on marble sounds like a very unpleasant visit at the dentist's. The level of detail you can put in is incredible, though.
I worked a lot on the leg joints, they're mostly done on all legs. I deviated from the "canon" joints because they were just plain impractical to carve. Second area of refinement is the head/torso area, I'm fairly content with how I could rescue some proportions I had previously thought botched beyond recovery. I have some figuring out to do on the main hip joint... how round can I make it without removing too much tensile strength, how off-center can it be and still look right?
The lighting on the photograph is unintentionally dramatic this time due to changed lighting arrangements, particularly a quite strong lamp just above the workbench. Gives me some ideas for glamour shots with the finished piece though.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BT5GNcw.jpg)
Bonus shots:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lFcnwoB.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7eUqJyg.jpg)
13-05-05, 47h total
Got some work done yesterday. Finalized the "skirt" position (open spaces for leg movement) and concluded the overall main directions. It's actually not that easy to say what directions exactly are front, back, left and right for a sculpture that is not completely straight and symmetric, but you need it to get the measurements, angles and proportions right.
My next steps will be finishing up the top half (detail the guns, face, shoulder and waist areas), then the legs, and lastly taking out the pedestal and replacing it with a steel support (involves drilling a fairly wide hole into the underside of the mostly finished sculpture, uh oh). Then I'm off to lots of filing and sanding.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aTuoWyi.jpg)
13-04-25, 45h total
Three sessions, just one set of photos, because I'm dumb. Lots of progress on the legs and the waist area, I'm quite pleased with how it worked out so far.
Please be so kind and read this blog entry and fill out this survey (~15 mins), if you're remotely interested in arts and crafts and haven't done so already.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Trcp92H.jpg)
13-04-13, 38h total
Weekly or so. Right.
I've resumed working on the immortal, sculpting the lower half for real now. I slimmed down the legs substantially and settled on leg positions. From here on it's going to be somewhat tricky, since the legs can't support the weight of the main body on their own. The plan is to leave the socket underneath the main body until basically the very end of the sculpting process, and then put in a metal support rod that will also serve as a display stand on the black socket I have tentatively chosen.
Good news: My dad's new workshop is basically done! More (and larger scale) news in my next blog entry.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YxT1dNs.jpg)
13-02-05, 33.5h total
I tackled the lower half today. I finalized the position of the little "skirt" the immortal has as a hip joint and the resulting angles of the legs. With those set it stone (haha) I could slim down the legs substantially and removed a fair bit of material today. Next time I'll start figuring out the bending angles in the knee joints, so that a) the legs are in fact the same length, b) the legs fit into the stone and c) they give the movement impression I want. However, I'll leave supports at the underside of all legs until the very end to prevent further accidents (I don't think they can carry the immortal's weight) and leave a solid base below the torso.
For those keeping an eye on the running total of hours I put into this sculpture - I don't just write down 2.5 hours every time I work on it, I religiously use an elaborate high-tech time measurement apparatus whenever I'm in the workshop. In other words, my great-grandfather's wind-up clock (visible in the action shot just behind me).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nLPF1lh.jpg)
Bonus pic: the legs before and after today's session. I unfortunately don't have other identical angles from before and after, but you can also see the reduction in the front view.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FH1Dt4d.jpg)
13-02-05, 31h total
Tough going. When I finished today, I felt like I hadn't accomplished much, but I think (hope) you can see some differences when comparing the pictures to the previous ones. The shoulder areas and guns are now as symmetric as I want to make them at this stage, and I also like the back area much better now.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hp8nikH.jpg)
13-02-02, 29h total
Helped a friend move house last saturday (very fun, was below the freezing point all day and we ran about, lugging heavy stuff and sweating like pigs), so you're treated to only a small update after a whole week yet again.
I mostly worked on the right shoulder/gun part, trying to mirror the proportions of the other side and rounding off the corners on both sides. Also, I realized my outline for the back area was all wrong and I corrected that. Was a bit tricky to wrap my head around how to best get from "there" to "here" without sacrificing too much material.
I can now safely say this will be my biggest project so far, in terms of invested time and effort. This is not to say that the Ultralisk or some of my other sculptures weren't demanding (concenptually and physically), but the hardness of the marble combined with the mostly power-tool approach makes this one very different for me (you have to be doubly careful to not break bits off or introduce nicks and scratches when you're working on sharp corners). And even with power tools, the Immortal will take longer than the other stones with mostly manual tools. But what the hell, I still enjoy working on it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bXFJwVR.jpg)
13-01-24, 26.5h total
"Weekly or so updates", right. The cold I'd been kind of nurturing ever since christmas finally got me last week and really threw me down for a couple of days. I've been much better for a couple of days, but I didn't yet want to physically exert myself in a cold basement room... Until today!
I worked some more on the upper half (yet again), really refined the right shoulder area and took away quite a bit of material. I'm also much closer to final size relations between height and length of guns, where the slopes and curves will be and so on. The red crayon markings are the areas I'll start on next time. I'll have to figure out how the back is going to look like exactly, as well as make the shoulders symmetric.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RQJo2GR.jpg)
13-01-10, 24h total
I worked on the head, shoulder and arm areas and brought its dimensions into line with the other one. If you compare the last to the current pic, you can spot the arms losing some height and thickness, especially the right hand one. It's a lot of measuring now, trying to get the proportions just right and symmetrical, without breaking off the ever more delicate surroundings..
I'm very satisfied with the glue, it's very solid and hardly visible at all even before refining and polishing (left top pic, can you spot it?). Regarding solidity, you can check if a piece of the sculpture is brittle or cracked by lightly hitting it with a solid metal object (hammer, end of chisel) and listening to the sound it makes, just like you would with a cracked glass or plate. The reattached arm rings just the same as the other one, or any other part of the sculpture for that matter.
My new job is starting off well, nice colleagues and fairly interesting tasks. Since I can choose my hours within reasonable boundaries, I started at seven today and left at a quarter to four (yay!), going straight to the workshop from work and worked there until seven or so. I'll try to do that regularly on tuesdays and thursdays, in addition to saturdays.
By the way, feedback keeps me going, so I'd be grateful for a shoutout now and then if you're still watching. Doesn't have to be praise or anything, just a little hello or comment would be nice.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Y2zaT.jpg)
13-01-06, 21.5h total
I spent some two hours refining the torso and head area. Kind of getting into detailed work now, because I want to remove as much material from the top half as possible before I hollow out the base any more. Even if the socket is still very robust at the moment, shocks from working on top have to be absorbed by some part of the base. The less material there is in the base, the more concentrated the resulting defects will be, and the greater the risk that later on some brittle part will come off when I least need it.
I reattached the second arm using a special glue. Interesting stuff, apparently on plastic basis and made of two components. The first is a pasty grey material that you mix with a hardener, and then it hardens within a couple minutes. It allegedly looks mostly like stone once it's hard, and you can polish it to a gloss, too. From what I've seen so far, it becomes whiter when hard, and it appears to be a very solid glue. The fun part here was mixing the components in a "100 parts glue to 3 parts hardener" ratio, without any measuring helps whatsoever. I mean, if you have a surface of like 4" x 4", you can mix a sufficiently large amount so that you can reasonably estimate the ratio, but for a small area... whatever, it seems to work so far.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7Eqjv.jpg)
12-12-31, 19.5h total
Put in some more hours, felt really good. The lower half is mostly blocked out now.
Happy new year.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ku62d.jpg)
12-12-27, 16.5h total
Only managed to squeeze in another hour. Appointments, appointments. Christmas time is about the opposite of a quiet, restful and homely time for those with large families you see far too rarely.
Worked mostly on the lower half, blocked out a second and a half leg. Also limited the downward extension of the arms and removed some material towards the waist area. Will continue to block out the legs, but will also leave a socket for now to carry the main weight of the body. Once the second arm is *ahem* re-attached, I'll roughly finalize the torso proportions and get a feeling for the final positioning of the legs. The current overly wide rough leg blocks leave a fairly broad corridor for the final posture with the correct sizes. Need to print out a shot from directly below the figure with some distances, attachment points (leg-torso) and angles.
Waiting for the ordered glue to arrive, along with some pro-branded T-Shirts, some sculptor's pr0n (the complete works of Michelangelo in high gloss photography) and new polishing equipment.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eUu1k.jpg)
12-12-22, 15.5h total
Worked on the torso some more, blocked out the extended front leg. Oh, and I stupidly broke off one arm while doing something I always tell students not to do.
Option 1: Use hammer on sculpture.
Option 2: Buy glue.
Option 3: Sculpt a damaged Immortal and claim it was planned all along.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qcS5n.jpg)
12-12-19, 13h total
Used the opportunity of having slept at a friend's place in the area and went right back to my parents' house and workshop this morning. Nothing like a bit of physical work to get over the previous night's combination of Winter Jack and Absolut Peach (hence the double update).
Mostly worked on the torso, detailed out the head and back area. Also took away a part of the lower half, warming up mentally to start on the hip and legs. Maybe it's training, maybe it's imagination, but I feel I can now work for about 2-3 hours several days in a row without have mega-sore muscles afterwards.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ynH6U.jpg)
Bonus: Regarding blocking out, see my comment down here:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uhLIA.jpg)
12-12-18, 10.5h total
Detailed the other shoulder area. Relatively speaking, this took longer than the previous one. The reason is fairly simple: When you're doing a symmetric sculpture, the second half had better match the first half. Small mistakes you made when sculpting the first half, and more importantly when you inferred and wrote down relative proportions, really stand out during the sculpting of the second half. Also, you shouldn't make mistakes and chip something off - on the first half, you can still work around the mistake, or (worst case) work it into something pretty, repeat it on the other side and claim it was intentional. If you do make mistakes (and small ones are pretty hard to avoid) you have to adjust the first half. Or lets better say, the half where more material remains.
We have a saying in germany (or maybe it's local to my area) describing the typical do-it-yourself situation: Dreimal abgeschnitten und doch zu kurz! ("Cut off thrice and still too short!").
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/II8Q7.jpg)
12-12-17, 8h total
Some blocking out of chest and back, sculpting right shoulder and gun area. This looks like a way larger progression than the other shots, but keep in mind that you're mostly limited by the amount of material that you can remove per time. Sometimes, it's actually faster to do some details.
Speaking of details, I almost overdetailed the shoulder at this point in time, since I might have to turn the figure onto its head to work on the underside.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jZt1u.jpg)
12-12-14, 5.5h total
More blocking out, getting angle of torso right and starting top-down on head area
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TCmvP.jpg)
12-12-13, 3h total
Thinking, drawing and simple blocking out of upper half
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FtoyJ.jpg)
Original Post:
Since HollowLord called it "quite possibly the manliest picture of all time" after I posted it in the comments of my last blog, I don't want to keep it from the general audience: me working with a power chisel. The blurry white specks on the right are actually flying chips of marble. Rawr. Actually, more like rrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRClackClackRRRRRrrrr. Since it's not exactly exciting to listen to, I often wear ear plugs with music under the protective headset. It's a bit of a hassle if one slips out (switch off tool, wiggle out of glove, undo headset, plug back in and undo all previous steps in correct order), but still better than nothing.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uMQjI.jpg)
... Still a sick sculpture though!
