With the rubber portion completed, now is the time to start on the plaster support shell, herewith is the photo of the first section of the shell hand-formed in place. While this hardens up I need to shovel snow off my driveway unfortunately, but about the time I finish that it will be time to form the next section.   Now with the first 2 sections done it’s time to add the rest needed for what will become a 12 piece shell. All the small pieces are required to deal with the multitude of deep undercuts and opposing surface angles. The smaller pieces also make it easier to dismantle and…

I was able to spend some time working on this today while making the mold of the seated gargoyle. The butterfly photo doesn’t show a lot of difference from the one taken yesterday in the previous post, but that’s because the image sie is reduced and the small details are not easy to see. I spent the time working on cleaning up the border, wings, antennae, ribbons and hair, mostly refining, sharpening, straightening and smoothing as needed. Next session I will be working on the flowers and face, either-or,  or both, there’s a lot of petals that all have to be smoothed, refined and sharpened!     The winged dog…

A new client in Delaware purchased the first public cast of this panel which due to various other projects was not completed in Sept as I had planned! I really do need to get this model done as the clay does dry out even when kept moist and under plastic wrapping, especially now that the furnace is active and my modelling studio room  warms up fast when it kicks on since the room is small and there’s a good sized register in the wall near the modelling table that blows the hot air out pretty good. So here we have the current view of the panel, I’ll be working on…

Now the mold itself has been started, I had to order another two gallon kit of my usual compound as I determined the one two gallon kid I had ordered was not going to be quite enough, and ratehr than trying to stretch it I decided to go ahead earlier in the week to order another kit and that arrived yesterday. That’s $215 each with the shipping so  the decision to use a second kit is not made lightly since it doubles the costs for the mold which may or may never see more than the one cast that a Nashville client ordered. The first application of the compound does…

Now that the plaster mold is mostly dry after two days in front of two box fans on “high” I decided to try pressing the first clay in it. It took about a half hour to carefully press the clay in, and it took about 35# of clay. I added the interior webbing that all of the architectural terracotta originals my work is based on- have for structural stength and integrity. My pieces don’t need the strength so much since they are not load bearing elements meant to support three stories of brickwork above them, so the webbing and wall thickness is between 5/8″ and 1″ thick, while the antique…

Now I have the original clay model set up on a board to begin the mold making process.

Today I am working on the plaster piece mold for this panel, the photo shows the previously pictured rubber positive now set up into a wood form for pouring the plaster piece mold. With this first photo two of the five sections required have been poured after putting in temporary clay blocking walls in the other two side sections I don’t want filled with plaster just yet. These two sections have to set first, and then they get completely soaped in situ and the soap allowed to dry before the next two sections are poured- in this case what is the top and bottom sides. And then the progressive sequence…

This model was completed in 2007, the design is after an extant terracotta sculpture on the  gothic inspired landmark  by famed architect Cass Gilbert at 90 West Street, NYC. The building sits across from the WTC site and when the twin towers collapsed in 2001 some of the falling steel and debris caused considerable damage to the North facade of 90 West Street.The building was actually under renovation when the 9/11 collapse happened. This  damage was in addition to the raging fires that went on for days in 90 West, but the building was not destroyed because when it was built in 1907-  over 100 years ago- the standard practice…

I did a small amount of work on the plywood for the facade of my furniture store model today, it is 1/2″ thick veneer-core apple ply. I have cut out for the two display windows and the door/transom openings. There is a row of 6 square windows across which on the real building are semi-opaque textured glass that I think I will use clear glass for on this instead so the interior is more visible. The door opening will be set back inside a couple of inches. I have not decided how deep I will make the box yet, I intend to finish the facade completely and decide. This will…

Colored concrete bas relief panel for the new city pool building to be inset into the exterior concrete block wall by the entrance. The design has been discussed in previous posts last summer, the techniques on the original clay model which was  my own design based around the drawings of the actual pool  and walkway layout. The design incorporates raised letters which were executed on the clay model using some novel-to-me but time proven techniques for creating raised letters in sculptures found in a 1930s era sculpture book. The book suggested that such raised letters were almost never hand formed individually in the clay as they simply cannot be easily…