, costs about $100-140 and is well worth it. I’ve burned up seven ordinary $25 glue guns in the past two years. This orange beast can effortlessly put out several pounds of glue a minute. It requires specific shaped glue sticks available in 11-pound boxes. You can find great deals on the web.How it happened
I have always loved the flamboyant dress-like fins of the lionfish. About ten years ago I realized that no one had ever done a mermaid based on the lionfish, so I did this one, “Coral Mermaid,” in Sculpey with vinyl fins and a coral base. It made a lovely little piece, all fluttery with crinkly edges. (Thanks to Mike Edenfield for the photo!)
The color was critical. Years ago I found a picture of a fish called hemilepidotus. This fish possessed the most glorious, brilliantly patterned fins and scales. It was a complicated dance of pattern and texture on a minute scale. This picture truly inspired me to make the first sculpture. My little sculpture did not do the photograph justice, though, and that bothered me.
Hemilepidotus
Skip forward 10 years. My business is successful, and my studio has made dozens of large scale sculptures. There are no pressing commissions and in the down time between paying work we try to stay busy. What are we going to build for fun?
Consideration number one: We must learn a new skill that can be applied to future projects. Hey, robotics! That could be fun! We could make something move.
Consideration number two: It must be spectacular. If you are going to take your precious free time for months and build something, there is no excuse for second rate work. You cannot claim client deadlines or lousy budget, since you have control over both of them.
Consideration number three: It has to be big. The opportunities to do the great defining pieces of your career come around once every couple of years. Are you going to waste those rare chances on a less-than-grand endeavor? That chance must be used to do something memorable!
So what to do? To solve this, I referred to my Secret Book of Wonderful Things — a catchall picture album where I keep clips from paper media: shots of furniture from Architectural Digest, crystal growth patterns from Scientific American, cute cards from Hallmark. If something for some reason looked pretty or caught my eye, I dutifully purchased it and clipped it for the album. The book is bursting at the seams with dresses, parrots, paintings, microscopic diatoms, colliding galaxies, and anything that has really pretty colors.
In this book I had saved the original picture of the fish hemilepidotus. Still gorgeous and texturally magnificent, it still inspired me. And I remembered I hadn’t got it right the first time. And then it struck me: a glittering image. Those textures are so similar to the Indian and Pakistani fabrics, the ones that are so heavily beaded and embroidered on delicate silks. My costuming friends has recently introduced to me the concept of layering fabrics to create visual depth. Now, if that moved….
It would be magnificent.
My working maquette
As you can see, it is still pretty rough. This establishes the size and basic shape without a lot of details. I like to save the details till the final piece. If you figure out everything in the small version, then going large becomes simply a mechanical process.
There is a tendency to follow the maquette slavishly, and that takes all the fun out of actually making the large version. The final sculpture has to be a piece in its own right, not just an enlargement. Also, in the act of making a piece, a dialog develops between you and the clay. It is the whispering little voice that tells you how the light interacts with the physical surface. It allows you to find subtlety, to work nuance into the forms. Finally, there is a down-to-earth, visceral way a sculpture 12 feet tall interacts with the space around it that is simply not there in the maquette. You have to aware of this interaction and listen to what the sculpture is telling you.
Maquette acupuncture
Since I do not have the wealth to have my mermaid scanned and digitally cut from foam, I am doing this the old-fashioned, roll-up-your-sleeves, build-it-in-your-garage way.
It would cost $1,000 to have her scanned, $2,000 for the data manipulation so the CNC machine would work, and $14,000 to have her cut in foam. At that point I could apply clay to the surface of the foam and begin sculpting from there. So, $17,000 does the first quarter of the work. I can do it in steel in a few weeks for about $500.
It is necessary to get accurate cross-sections, or the Distortion Fairies will jinx your work. My cross-sections go around the body from the neck to the tail every 1 1/2 inches on the maquette, which will translate to one-foot increments in the completed sculpture. For the lateral line, place pins in the maquette right down its center.
More steps after the jump.
Scaling up the model
To get the other smaller cross-sections, use a carpenter’s pin jig. The cross-sections are labeled on the body at “one foot” marks. The explanation, along with photos of the rest of the scaling procedure, appears after the jump.
Starting to weld
A sculpture this size requires 1000+ lbs of clay and up to 800 pounds of molds. So whatever you do, the armature has to be able to hold a ton. Honestly, that is simply not that much — when you can weld!
(If you don’t have access to welding equipment, this work can also be done with wood, but it is a lot heavier. In fact, until about 50 years ago, all sculptures of this size were done with wood armatures.)
I welded this steel base and glued together the cardboard sections with hot glue. The wood struts keep them from flopping around. I folded out the centers of the small cross-sections to make them firmer.
More photos of the base after the jump.
Timeline
For the technical folks out there, here is the timeline so far:
- Two days to build the maquette.
- One day to make cross sections off the maquette and transfer them to acetate.
- One day to steal cardboard from dumpsters around town. I need the big stuff without seams.
- One day to transfer sections from acetate to cardboard.
- Two days to design the steel armature and buy steel.
- Two days to weld the base.
- One day to glue the sections together and move them to the welding studio.
- Half a day to mount the cardboard cross-sections to the base.
- Four days to weld the rest of the body (as shown in the next posts).
Total so far: two weeks, plus a half day.
Armature
Here is the wire frame that establishes the shape of the fish. I have used 1-inch thin-wall square steel tube for the underlying structure.
In this picture you see a pin-and-socket arrangement. I welded a pair of small square pins to the torso side of the seam, and a receiving pair of larger square sockets to the fish side. One set simply fits inside the other, with gravity holding it in place.
This arrangement lets me break apart the big armature to into smaller pieces at the torso, the base of the tail, and each arm at the shoulder. I’m making this sculpture in my apartment, so this armature has to come up to my second-story apartment, in pieces, via the stairs, and fit through an ordinary man-sized door.
Photos of the complete armature and the tail section after the jump.
Ready to move
I’ve removed all the nonessential cardboard, and now I’m ready to move the armature. As fragile as it looks, this armature can hold a lot of weight. I’ve reinforced each cross-section with additional quarter-inch rods supported from the main steel tube trussing.
Another photo of the fish body frame after the jump.
Tight fit
The armature in the studio (my one-room apartment). Yeah, it is pretty tight! But she can be swiveled and rotated, so it won’t be that hard.
Metal lath
Metal lath is available at most concrete suppliers; cheap, lightweight, really strong. A warning, though: When you cut this stuff with a SawzAll, the edges become razor blades. Heavy gloves are essential!
I used concrete wire ties to bind the lath to the wire frame. By the way, if you increased the quarter-inch rod to half-inch rebar, you could make this sculpture in concrete for outdoor use — but it would weigh about a ton.
Foil and hot glue
For the human part of the mermaid, I start with aluminum foil and hot glue. Aluminum foil is one of the best and fastest ways to sculpt really large pieces. It is possible to bulk out the human form in a few hours. Simply crumple the foil in a way that leaves the most entrapped air, then glue it to the cardboard. Build the figure slightly larger than you want. Then, using a rubber mallet, tap the surface to the correct dimensions. The crushed surface can hold a lot of weight.
My hot glue gun, the 3-M Scotch-Weld Hot Melt Applicator TC, goes for about $100 and is well worth it. I’ve burned up seven ordinary $25 glue guns in the past two years. This orange beast can effortlessly put out several pounds of glue a minute. It requires special shaped glue sticks available in 11-lb boxes. You can find great deals on the web.
Three more photos of the foiled sculpture (and my apartment) after the jump.
Applying the clay
I am using “Le Beau Touche” modeling clay from Chavant. This plasticine goes for approximately $4 a lb. It is a mid-level hardness formulated for northern climates. It is just the right density at room temperature, 65 degrees, to be pleasant to work with. In Texas it would melt.
To soften the clay, heat about 2 lbs of it in a microwave for two minutes. Then apply the clay with a spackle knife or trowel. I’m putting on about 1/16-inch and leaving little sparkles of foil showing. This reminds me of the depth of the clay.
I have tipped the mermaid down to get to the top of the hair.
A side shot after the jump.
Time to start sculpting
I generally like to put a face on the piece first. It sets the tone for the rest of the body.
Possible fin mechanism
This is a rough of a possible mechanism to power the undulating fins.
The movement is a crucial part of this work. I have decided for the “less is more” approach. The fins will be immobile about 80% of the time. When people first see her, the Silk Mermaid should simply be a large beautiful sculpture. Then, with glacial slowness, she will begin to move — a wide graceful flowing arc of silk and lace. She will flow briefly, and then with gentle care, slow to a stop. At some later point — five minutes, ten minutes — she will resume with a different fluttering motion, then again cease.
The point is to make the motion unpredictable. If her fins fluttered all the time, it would quickly become boring. If the same motion were performed repeatedly, again, pretty boring.
Another shot of the mechanism after the jump.
Hair – no cheating
I am beginning to establish the movement of the hair. Hair is one of the most common cheat points in figurative sculpture. (The other is drapery.) You cannot get the human body wrong, or everyone will see it. However, hair and drapery are where you separate the good artist from the great. I intend to take the time and do something really amazing.
I have removed the left arm so I can get closer to the body. This is one of the pin-and-socket joints I designed into the armature.
Cleaning up
I’m starting to clean up the hair and body. I am also running dangerously low on clay.
Acetate pattern transfer
With the first side of the tail done, I transfer the pattern over to the other side. I use acetate sheets to trace the design and reverse it. It is a time-consuming process but very accurate.
Hair finished – but I need clay!
By the time I transferred the back, I had nearly run out of clay. I decided to finish the hair, put it in molds, and then retrieve that clay. The hair alone uses about 120 pounds of clay, and even that may not be enough.
Finishing the hair took 17 days total — a shocking amount of time on such an area. I was determined, though, to do something remarkable.
Moldmaking: the hair (1 of 4)
(As mentioned in “Hair finished – but I need clay,” I decided to mold the mermaid’s hair ahead of the rest of the figure, so I could reclaim the clay for use elsewhere on the sculpture. I describe the entire process of molding the hair using nearly two dozen photos over several posts.)
I start with carefully removing as many of the difficult-to-mold hair pieces as possible — 29 individual bits, plus the main mass! Again, this is shocking; typically there may be two to five additional pieces. I carefully number both each bit and its connection point.
More pictures after the jump.
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Moldmaking: the hair (2 of 4)
Here I’ve applied the first, really thin coat of rubber. It flows like honey and gets somewhat messy. This captures all the detail.
I am using Mold Max 30 high-tear-strength silicone rubber from Smooth On Corp. Used with the thickening agent Thi-Vex, this rubber has the most wonderful creamy texture, and it will hold onto a surface upside down.
Many more photos after the jump.
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