March 9, 2009
March 1, 2009
Jack In A Block

Jackie’s hands are in that block. Although I’m not quite there yet, I’m dreaming of the moment I can begin to cut up that block. My wife thinks I should be dreaming of our impending baby–on or about March 17th…
January 1, 2009
Double Vision
Here is the output of a program I wrote in VB dot net. It’s a slap-together program but it does what I want it to do and it’s not for sale, so I don’t care about the polish or lack thereof.
Among other things that it can do, it allows me to resize and overlay and most importantly, fade the opacity of photos, so that I can compare. Compare what? Compare a photo of a person in the position I’m sculpting with a photo of the work to-date.
It does in actuality, what sculptors do in their heads. While most sculptors would love this for helping them “see” what to take-away, because of how I work, it helps me save time and material in knowing how much wood to ADD before I do the take-away thing.
I’m still going to measure like crazy; and squint; and visulaize and draw on the piece with pencils and sharpies, but to have a static record that I can measure OFF of, without repeatedly posing and measuring myself (don’t laugh, it happens all the time), I can be quicker and more precise.
The unsettling part is that the overlays reveal errors that I have made that annoy me. Hopefully, we can correct for them and the viewer will be blissfully, unaware and no, I never say specific, negative things about my work because that would prejudice the viewer and if they don’t find the faults that I find with the piece, are they really there? And also remember that my standards are a lot higher than the typical, casual viewer.
Back to work. –Fog
November 26, 2008
November 12, 2008
November 8, 2008
Jackie Robinson statue
Here is the raw 14″x11″x11″ block of basswood glued up and ready to be transformed into Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s head. We’re already a few hours past this point in reality. The rough out went faster than ever, thanks to new tools I purchased but the detail work is crawling. Just crawling. I’m having the “yips” about getting into the actual do-or-else stuff. I haven’t done this kind of work in a year now and I’m low on confidenct and have found that when I get home from work and only have a few hours to play with, that I fritter away that time as a way to avoid getting into it.
This happens in the sculpting business. You have to punch through, even if it means sitting there for hours and not doing much more than looking at photos and being scared to remove wood. At some point, you will spot “easy” wood to remove and by doing that, you will be drawn in and eventually, you will get into the “zone”.
“The zone” is that hackneyed phrase that is used mostly in sports and sometimes in music. It can be applied to any task, in my opinion. It is, to me, that point where your brain stops processing “noise”. Noise is anything not central to the task. Once you stop processing noise (tired, time to do something else, worrying about x, hungry, what’s on tv), you get focused on the task or piece and instead of working on it with really only partial attention, you bring more of your abilities to bear on the task. This feeds a loop in that, once this happens, results will quickly flow; results at a much faster rate than you are lately accustomed to. Once that happens, you are going to be excited by the progress and that feeds your attention lock and stengthens it, leading to more and more positive results as measured against time.
Once you see the effect of this, the things that were creeping into your thoughts and distracting you begin to melt away. You are less and less interested in them. It gets to the point where even if you work very late and might ordinarialy be concerned that you will be tired for work the next day, in this case, you won’t care. You will lose most of your concer with, and thoughts about, time. You know you’re in the sweet spot and are enjoying that and thinking about time will only hinder you, so out it goes. Now, you’re in “The Zone”. You get a lot done. You’re excited about it. Your confidence soars and as a result, sticky problems are toppling one after the other, as you plow through the project. It’s a great feeling. It’s an energizing feeling. It can spill over into other areas of your life.
Trouble is, getting in there the first time.
November 7, 2008
November 5, 2008
November 3, 2008
Jack Roosevelt Robinson is underway
Here is the beginning of the life-size Jackie Robinson statue. When looking at this photo, is there any question that it is 100% wood?
This statue is going to be my meisterwerk; better than my DiMaggio; better than the last Babe Ruth. I’m feeling great at the controls and confidence is high. I’ve gathered a surprising amount of Robby photos for the push on the head; enough so that I won’t have to go up to the library at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, to get photos. That’s expensive.
Here’s what I managed to gather up:
The key is to have as many as you can with good detail of the head and from all possible angles. You want just below and just above level. Three quarter and profile and three quarter from behind. Anything that will get you to be able to work out the 3-dimensional aspect of the head. It has to look right from 360 degrees, not just from the front. You’re taking the 2-D photo and trying to guess at what the 3-D object looks like. The 2-D photo contains some 3-D information, but only around the edges. If you had a series of 2-D photos at intervals of, oooh, say, every 4 degrees, you’d have all the info needed to do 3-D.
Have I thought of writing a computer program to do this stuff? You betcha. Will it help me now for Jack? Nope. But this is where being a sculptor is really meaningful. This is where you make the piece alive or not–just a piece of wood (or pieces, as the case is). All the marbles. The challenge.
For this piece, I’ve decided to do a sort of time-lapse, so you can see it come together. I think that might be fun. The sawdust is not fun. More as events warrant. –Fog

















