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Escuela de Arte y Superior de Diseño de Mérida. Ciclo de Grado Medio de Reproducciones Artísticas en Piedra
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Architectural Stone Carving Programs (ARSCAP) www.arscap.info
You may think direct carving is a sculpture system that has no method, like if it were a free technique in which everybody do whatever they can or whatever they want.
Naturally direct carving has a method, techniques, a process…
The first thing you should know is that there are two types of direct carving.
The first one is the primitive direct carving, the Egyptian one, it consists in starting sculpturing by every side at the same time.
It requires a very precise drawing preparation of what you want to do but you can’t make corrections.
Direct carving in the Egyptian way, or in the modern movement way of Brâncusi or Mateo Hernández, supposes not making changes because you had to do it form every side at the same time.
The sculpture had to be prepared from the beginning and changes couldn’t be done later.
These sculptures have such a hieratic aspect sometimes, such a regularity and symmetry… that feels forced by the sculpture system.
Secondly we have the other direct sculpture type, although used for certain things in Rome, we can consider it a medieval invention.
It’s the relief way: Starting from one side or from one of the angles, it always leaves extra stone, allowing us to make changes.
It brings improvisation, it brings the sculptor’s ability to change things as he keeps on working on it and it also brings the possibility for the stone to join the creative process in a way.
In direct carving, drawing has a fundamental role.
Different drawing uses:
There are different drawing types to apply to sculptures.
First we have the pure lace drawing, what means drawing axes, solids… as a roughing guide.
Then, we also have profiling drawing. We have seen it before. When you have to remove something from one side, a line as precise as possible must be drawn to remove the material from that line with our tool.
Is about drawing a shallow picture that just consist in a functional drawing, instrumental… not a nice drawing.
A beginner’s mistake can be start drawing the sculpture we want to carve in stone, and draw a very nice and detailed picture.
No, no, no! Because as soon as we start carving we also erase the picture.
We also have a drawing use that is needed very often. It’s like simulating shadows for example, or forms you need to see but you can see them very well, because of that tricky aspect that volume has, you can see it in cheek marks for example.
Draw several lines or plots to see how much a bigger shadow can affect the cheek, it will help you to see it more clear. It’s a finish drawing.
And we get to detail drawing, when we are finishing and we need to outline ears details, or eyes, or whatever… and we need a drawing that we can use as a guide too, it is the opposite of what we use at the beginning.
Sculpture has a stonework part and a maybe bigger part… one third of stonework art and two-thirds of drawing.
Actually knowing stonework systems and drawing you can make a sculpture using direct carving perfectly, as long as we watch and respect the rules and systems we have commented.
I stand for manual work in stone, a manual direct carving in sculpture for many reasons:
For once, I believe that is an experience nobody should miss, I mean, it’s like we were always forced to travel by car… like if we were forced to arrive by place… Maybe I want to walk, enjoying the scenery or spending the night.
This is the same, it is a beautiful job, we have been doing it for 5000 years and it shouldn’t be strange for us. It’s still a human experience, it’s special and enriching, even if the sculpture is better or worse accomplished, you are still experiencing it.
Another point, sometimes you are carving in stone and the improvisation comes, machines go too fast, they go faster than thought.
Angle grinders saws impose an inhuman rhythm… much faster.
It is easier being conditioned by a radial saw.
If you are working manually, even though you pitch and remove big chunks, you still have time to think and to improvise, making the process really creative… Everything is open and the stone is talking to you, even sometimes you can make mistakes.
Manual tools and thoughts have the same pace, mechanical tools go too fast.
Créditos
Escultor: Miguel Sobrino González
Guión y Dirección: Luis Alfonso Macías Moreno
Cámara: Manuel Acedo Lavado
Edición: Manuel Acedo Lavado. Luis Alfonso Macías Moreno
Traducción (Inglés) : Alejandro Acedo Lavado
Música: Luys de Narváez
Canción del Emperador
Guitarra: Beatriz Macías Moreno