For Kiwi John- current stone sculpture project

[cliffrod]

Thanks Cliff for sharing your carving world with us. Neil and I both appreciate your contribution and insights. PS You should have told Gary the piece was beyond you as well ! I assume the challenge was greater than the risk ? Good on you.

John- if you're interested, here's a link to news article & video interview Gary did in April 2018. https://www.wcax.com/content/news/A-...479806803.html. Even though my cousin Andy actually taught me more as his apprentice & legacy, Gary is the man who opened the door for me and let it happen.

I've got a lot of links in my website, trying to be as transparent with everyone as I can be. There are direct links to all so my real competitors because I want to get work because I'm good, not just because they couldn't find anyone else. I'm also trying to combat all the crap from china, which is simply economic warfare meant to destroy our domestic capacity. There's a lot about that on my website as well, including my fight to keep a major national memorial from being outsourced to china base upon claims it couldn't be done in the USA. No need to discuss the politics on here, but it's really sad watching this way of life die.

[cliffrod]

Pics from 30 minutes ago. Aside from schedule, I'm happy with how it's coming. He looks good.

Most carving of front has been resolved. Pointing machine is very helpful for checking dimensions, even if dimensions need to change. Many times I'll find small things in the model that I want to change to improve the job. Ideally, the job will always look better than the model.

Bulk behind head has been removed, which involved some pointing. Tops of shoulders have been developed and now I'm working on hair detail. Looking forward to finishing and selling more work soon....

[Rex_A_Lott]

^^Awesome work Clint

[dennis]

Nice job Cliffy
Regards Dennis

[cliffrod]

Thanks, guys. The support is much appreciated. Here's a little more insight into my world-

Before posting here, I sent the same pics in last post to the manufacturer because I thought it was looking good She's very happy. but right now, the patron is apparently not happy and has asked "if I was done with the eyes." As explained & agreed before carving, the iris area is carved as a concave partial circle, with pupils located at the lowest point of that concave area. Making or drilling a definitive hole for the pupil makes the subject appear to glare like a maniac. Leaving round convex smooth eyes looks like a zombie or dead man (not cool for a cemetery setting) and carving lines on a convex eye to denote eye detail is an amateur fail in my business.

The first pics show the actual shape and detail of the stone in neutral light with limited value. So I sent these pics with slightly different lighting to demonstrate typical shadows and stronger value variations that show the focal direction of the eyes is down and to His left as originally composed & approved. Hopefully they'll be happy.....









Edit- received notice that eyes have been approved so now I can proceed & get it finished.

[neilb]

looks fantastic cliffy, i'm really enjoying watching your progress

[123pugsy]

Most excellent.

[cliffrod]

Thank you, sirs.

I sold a small memorial job with a carving of three daffodils yesterday. Hard to sell hand carved floral work nowadays, so pretty enthused. And it's a local project, which is even harder to sell. Very cool.

[Steve Murphy]

Nice work, very interesting Cliff.

[cliffrod]

Thanks, Steve. It changes a lot here at the very end as details are defined and overall noise is eliminated. Getting pretty close to finished and will post more pics soon.

[Bill Tromblay]

Hi,

Looks great, it is very neat to see the process.

Bill

[MP&C]

Beautiful work Clint. Thought I had patience....

[cliffrod]

Hi,

Looks great, it is very neat to see the process.

Bill

Beautiful work Clint. Thought I had patience....

thank you, sirs. Your compliments mean a lot to me.

these pics are from a couple of days ago, as I started on the hair detail.

Carving indefinite things like water, fire, smoke or clouds and hair are always a bugger. Hard to make things spontaneous on purpose and any overt definition usually spoils these details.

Some carve hair with deliberately incised lines (chisel, sandblast or die grinder) and imho the head of hair ends up looking like a string mop. I was trained to axe the hair.

Hand axing (or simply axing) is using a chisel to smooth the surface of granite and is somewhat analogous to planishing. Hand axing is the old way. Very laborious but it produces fine straight lines all over the surface. These are generally impercievable to a causal viewer but become obvious when a light source is moved or manipulated. Usually lots of methodical cross hatching is done first to smooth the contours, with the final orientation of chisel cuts made to handle light as desired- perpendicular to light create shadow & roughness, parallel to light to demonstrate flow or movement or fully cross hatched to minimize any shadow or definition.

In general, Polishing a granite carving is for amateur and novices. We look for these chisel lines, because it demonstrates the skill of the finisher or carver. Hand axing a carving is no big deal. Anybody can fake a curve. Straight lines, big flat panels and square corners are a bitch. Hand axing an entire large flat/square/geometric job like an obelisk or architectural component is the real deal. The next time you look at any old granite headstones or building components, try to look at them in raking light to seeing hand axing marks.

To do hair, the final lines are oriented as the hair will flow. Some contouring work including cocave & convex shape development is done first. Then much of that is axed away to soften the shape, with final lines oriented as the hair would flow. Hard obvious detail blatantly suggests movement of hair. Although they're largely visible to the naked eye, Fine lines then direct light as hair would naturally move. Customers unfamiliar with the process will complain that a head of hair looks bald & smooth in pics. But when it is seen in person, they're amazed that you can see every single hair.

The same principle is used to make skin and flesh appear vibrant with some movement instead of being bald & perfectly smooth. Marble is polished, in part because lit is absorbed into the marble and reflected back out. This softens the surface (such as skin) and makes it appear more lifelike, Granite is impervious to light, so the light only demonstrates the tooled surface. You can't deliberately carve detail lines into skin without aging the subject. But the fine lines produced by axing produce lines to make skin and flesh appear vibrant and lifelike instead of stoic and false.

right side, simple bulk contouring-



Left side, with additional finer convex and concave detail added-



Front view view for comparison-




More detail added, with different light-



Front view again, after more work on His left-




After doing the hair detail, shrinking the forehead a little to help the eyes, carving the cloud detail all around the figure and axing the sawed surfaces on each side up to the scrolls (ggrrrrr...) I thought I had finished the carving yesterday. I'm headed down to the studio now to see if I am finished. Hopefully He didn't go out drinking last night.. More soon.

[cliffrod]

I used to come home from the studio, especially when I was an apprentice, and be all jacked up about how good my stone looks. The next day, things would look a lot different than I remembered... We would laugh about how they must have gone out after we closed up, went on a bender and got hammered.. It's funny, but it's not- especially when you had gone too far. Looks like there was no obvious wild partying after I quit yesterday. He still looks good the morning after.

this morning I was anxious to see if the changes I made to His temples would look good (better, not worse) than the pics in the last post.. Heads are a challenge. Make them too big and they look like Frankenstein. Make them too small and they've got no brains. make the hair big trying to fake it & it looks like they're were a helmet. Thankfully, the forehead and all the head proportions looks good. It's a nice looking stone. Very cool.

just sent these ambient light pics to the manufacturer. If they approve, they'll send them to the retailer. If they approve, they'll send it to their customer. If they approve, I'm done.











If it ships now, maybe I can get caught up on the million little things that have piled up lately & maybe even get some work done on the Guzzi before the next stone gets here.

I really appreciate all the interest and the good words. Never shared a stone project like this. Thanks for asking me to do it, Kiwi John.

[Chris_Hamilton]

Don't know how I missed this. Really nice work Cliff.

[dennis]

Well done there cliffy, Glad he did'nt get into the alter wine last night.
Regards Dennis