Newsboy- Beginning Of The Large Newsboy Sculpture Cont.

November 12-21, 2004
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, started the sculpting of the life size newsboy.

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

Headless
The sculpture is coming along. I am working on the head separately from the body. This enables me to work on it from all directions. Sometimes turning a head upside down helps me to get the details and proportions correct. For the brim of the hat I have used the pattern that I purchased and cut it out in cardboard and then covered it with clay, pinned it to the head, and added the top of the hat. I have to be careful; I don’t want to add these details too soon, because I need to be able to reach the eyes.

Torch
This clay is very hard. After heating it up and putting it on the armature it cools down and hardens. To put more detail in the sculpture I have to heat it up. The torch is my best friend. The process of doing the life size sculpture is very physical. This is where my Popeye forearms come from. During this process I’ll sculpt for two days and then let my arms and hands rest. In between I spend a lot of time cleaning up. This processes is messy, messy, messy.

Paper
I have taken real newspapers and coated them with wax. They are just pinned in place for now. Putting them in place helps me with proportions. Later I’ll carve the headline in the paper.I am really counting on the small wax sculpture. I spend a lot of time holding it up, in line with the large sculpture, to see how it is progressing.
Next week I’ll take some time off to spend some time with my family for Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Time to continue on with the process, but first, let’s learn about the possible future journey of this newsboy.

STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
Learning how to enlarge a sculpture

There are several ways to enlarge a sculpture.  There is a method called pointing up that is described by Christopher Pardell in his article.This You Tube Video by Joe McCluskey shows the pointing up process with a pantograph. might help you to understand the process. A new way of enlarging sculpture is done by a company called Synappsys. They scan artwork and then take the image into a computer and enlarge it. Foam is cut out by another machine. The pieces are then secured with rods through them, to keep them together.  And then she put clay on top of the foam.  Now that is quite a bit of hot wax to put on a sculpture! The artist’s Alice in Wonderland Sculpture was created this way. Watch her video to see how it is done.