I anticipate finishing this model this weekend, I did a little minor refining here and there and on the left side today, there are four of the left side petals (egg and dart) attached to the face that need refining, shaping and cleaning up yet, that’s mainly what is left to do this weekend. I’m still not happy with the nostrils and transision to the upper lip area yet, not very easy to transistion convincingly because obviously the lips and mouth are highly stylized so there’s little in the way of reference examples to go by, however, I think building the nose downward on the tip and nostril edges a…

Back in October I had an unfortunate health issue with one of my dogs that necessitated taking him to the big veterinary teaching university hospital- Iowa State University- for an exam and MRI, over the two trips I made there I became aware of some art work on the campus, naturally, wanting to know more I looked up their web site to see if they had any history on it. I didn’t find anything on the interesting larger than life styled bronze dog in front of the emergency entrance, but I did find information on pieces I didn’t see, as well as made a mental connection between a story in…

More progress today.

This terracotta panel is in the Brooklyn Museum sculpture garden and dates to around 1885-1890, I had never seen a design quite like it, the building it came from was on 3rd Ave and 68th Street and had been demolished. I’m quite tempted to make a model after this because it’s so unique, I calculated it’s size is about 19″ tall and 22″ wide. Maybe after I do the Cable Building acanthus panel I’ll do this. It is a panel originally from the Mulcaster Building formerly at 1156-1162 Thirdrd Avenue at 68th Street, Manhattan, circa 1885 This delightful image of a butterfly girl sipping nectar from blossoms through a straw…

I was sort of flip browsing some old photos on my drive while revamping my web pages extensively the last two days and I came across some 35mm photos of took of the building from the fire escape way back in 1979. One of the designs I photographed caught my eye again as it has a number of times over the years and I decided to take my large scanned copy and fix it in Gimp to eliminate the angle of view. Next I fixed the proportions and lastly I managed to scale the size of the original by using a couple of photos, one happened to be a photo…

Today’s progress shot:

I have begun adding the mask to the backer now and roughing it out.

Now with about 140 pounds of clay pressed into the form and having used the template to form the concavity and the 2″ flat crown, I have the backer section moldings’ shape in the clay and ready to begin probably to-morrow on adding the mask portion to this.

Now that I have the size determined that I want my model to be, I have my form ready to begin shaping the backer section first with it’s concave face. I decided 26″ wide, with the shrinkage of the clay the dry model will wind up around 24″ wide. The form will create the rectangular shape of the backing portion behind the mask, the mask will need to be completely modelled free-hand onto it similarly to the way the horse-head model was. A 1918 photo taken when the Commodore was under construction, that’s Grand Central Station on the left and this view was made before the elevated viaduct on Park…

Now that the horse head model has been finished, I am thinking of making smaller version of the Commodore Hotel copper cornice mask: Casts could host an authentic looking, interesting and effective green copper patina on them using either a variety of paints as I used to do, or with one of the real metal and chemically treated coatings by sculptor and patina expert Ron Young whose book on bronze patination I have. Ron Young is highly regarded throughout the world for his knowledge and use of metal patinas. He is the author of the two books on the subject: “Methods for Modern Sculptors” and “Contemporary Patination”.