Newsboy- Now We Are Getting There!

January 3-10, 2005
Sculptor Bridgette Mongeon has documented the entire process of creating a figurine of a newsboy and a life-size bronze sculpture. Watch the artist work through these posts. In this blog, she has also included information for students and teachers. In the previous post, we learned a little about making huge strides in the creation of the life-size newsboy

If you are lost and want to go back to the chronological running list of posts, follow this link.

I was so excited to pick up the first small bronze newsboy sculptures from the foundry. The foundry did take photos of the process, but I will wait and post those later.

The life-size sculpture is coming along well. It feels so good to have the head attached. We put a rod through the head and into the torso to secure it. You can still see the rod in the photo. Now that the head is attached, he is coming to life. I can hardly wait to get the arms more refined and add the hands. The excitement continues.

I have, however, lost one assistant to be replaced by another. My daughter, Christina, worked with me over the holidays, and I think that Miguel, who is now helping, is probably as frustrated with me as she was. No sooner does my assistant get done smoothing the sculpture, which is quite a bit of physical work, and I take one look at the sculpture and the changes needing to done jump out at me. Then, there I go again, carving and adding clay. The assistant comes in the next day and has to smooth it all over again.

THE DETAILS
I had to stop sculpting the shoes, because of the old fashion brads on the shoes. I could not figure out how to fabricate them, so I have opted for trying to find real brads for the shoes. Houston Leather says they carry them.

It looks like I will have a few “real” things on the sculpture. The buttons are staying, and because I am running out of time, I will most likely cast real suspenders. The white suspenders that I have now are not really what I want. I would prefer the ones with the leather at the buttons.

My deadline of getting this life size sculpture completely sculpted is quickly approaching. I want to leave myself plenty of time for foundry work, including mold making and working the waxes.

I can hardly wait to get going on the hands.

I attached his unfinished hand and put a paper in it just to see how it might look all put together. I had to snap the picture very quickly because the hand was not secure.

It is moving along, now let’s go see the Details on A Life Size Sculpture.