Another Reading girl update

I have worked on her right hand and arm today. Having the maquette in her lap helps me to see the detail of the fingers.


This is the side view of the sculpture. She stills needs a great deal of refining....



I am working out the earthwork and the plantings for the lower half of the sculpture. I have placed pins where the plants will go. The plants will grow 4 -6" high and fill the area between the berm and the sculpture. As the location for the sculpture is
shady I will be using Vinca Minor for the planting. The particular variety I have selected is called Atropupurpea and has a purple bloom and has a more prostrate form than other varieties of vinca minor.

reading girl update

Don has gotten the sculpture to a point where I can take over. He has "pointed up" various areas in the face (eyes, nose, corners of the mouth) using calipers.

One of the techniques when carving is to position the model in a direct line from the sculpture. Then, you
can check by eye what stone needs to be removed.
This
is a side view, as I began working on the hand and arm.

You can see the progress, from the last picture.

You can see she that has come a long way in a short amount of time, however, there is still a lot of work to go...

I found this strangely patterned leaf while walking on our property.

This is a Great Spangled Fritillary ( had to consult my guide book on that one). It allowed me to get quite close to it.

This is a little honey bee that was in the house and was starving, so I put some sugar water in a spoon and took her outside.
I discovered this tiny flower and flower bud growing on our property. The flower is maybe 1/8" across.

Meanwhile, back in Kentucky....

While I was in Colorado carving butterflies into wax, Don was blocking the "Reading Girl" with a chainsaw. When I got back I had to begin work on a maquette as I am a finalist for a commission in Terre Haute, Indiana, so Don continues with blocking out the sculpture until I finish the maquette and can begin carving.

With temperatures in the 90s, it was too hot to work outside anymore, so Don moved the sculpture into the studio. Here he has begun shaping the stone by finding "points" from the model (measuring up and over using various measuring devices, squares, calipers, etc.). You can barely see the maquette in the background...

And here is the other view, now you can see the maquette and that there is a significant amount of stone to be removed...

Don has further refined the form...

You can see the significant change from earlier as Don gets the stone closer to the form of the maquette.
And now for some flowers...

A Dayflower.

A close up of a Deptford pink...

An unusual and tropical looking plant, the Passion Flower. This is the yellow variety.

A trip to Colorado

I just returned from a trip to Loveland, Colorado to do finish work on the Home of the Innocents sculpture entitled "Metamorphosis". The blanket portion of the sculpture has a pattern of butterflies, front and back. The blanket could not be thick enough to pull a mold from both sides (it would end up weighing too much), so I had to go to the foundry and carve the individual butterflies into the back of the wax blanket.

Here are the waxes for the two sculptures at Art Castings of Colorado (great place, great people). I will
devote another post to just the foundry and some of what I saw there.

This is part of the "Metamorphosis" sculpture.

Sal, a wax technician at Art Castings, holds up the baby from "Acension" so I can be sure that everything looks right.

This is the blanket with all the butterflies that I carved directly into the wax. I had to make so many, many butterflies - I was seeing them in my sleep.

After I was done with the wax, I got to go up to Rocky Mountain National Park, which is only about 50 miles from Loveland.

This time of year, there are lots of babies. Here is a herd of elk with their calves.

This bull elk came right up next to the car, making it easy to get a good picture.

This is a variety of Orchid that is native to the region.

This was the highlight of the trip, being able to go across Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved road in the United States. I'm on a path leading to the peak of Sundance mountain, which is over 12,400 feet above sea level. And yes, I got to the peak with a 360 degree view of the mountains, pretty cool.

As I was leaving, a thunderstorm came up and with it, a rainbow. A great ending to a great trip.