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The Hirst Art Studies | Miniatures 

Introduction:

Friday May 7th. This day I sat down at the kitchen table and prepared the styrodur casting form for the next facade. This will be the house “Sint Jozef” situated at the Haverwerf in the Belgium city of Mechelen, built in 1669.
Having the whole day still ahead of me I decide to try and sculpt the facade in one day. Normally I take three days for a facade but today I want to try to finish this one by the end of the day. While sculpting I try and document the stages as much as possible.

So let's start:

7:45; The styrodur temporary form is made and I start preparing the plaster to cast the form. Straight after the casting I make coffee and get dressed.



8:15; I start drawing the basic lines on to the plaster cast and determine which lines are to be cut first. From the start I have to think about the height of all the parts.



8:24; The first cut is there. The facade is roughly divided in three parts. The ground floor, the first and second floor. (Sounds logical) So I start with the ground floor.
8:36; First I cut back the area between the three arches and the horizontal line above the arches. I lower this area about 4 mm. Then I cut back the rectangular wall piece below the two large windows about 2 to 3 mm. The lower elevation above the arches is the basic layer of the façade. This is where the brick wall will be. It is also a guideline for the other brick sections in the façade.



8:52; The windows as well as the door section are carved in and cut back about 2mm. I draw lines on to the plaster using a pencil and a ruler. The cutting process at this stage is fully free hand.



9:17; The next step is to lower the main areas of the middle section. I cut the horizontal lines and cut back the three main areas of the middle section about 1.5 mm.



9:29; The four vertical beams are cut in this section and the spaces in between the vertical beams are again lowered by 1,5 mm. The window sections are starting to get shape.



9:57; Before moving on to the top section I decided to go a bit deeper again in all the window sections. Each window gets another horizontal beam and the the areas around it are again cut back about 1 mm. I also lower the area of the door section another 1 mm leaving two decorative elements in the upper left and right corner of the doorway.




10:18; next I move on to the upper section. I start with cutting the lines around the windows and decorative sides and cut the area back about 3mm.



10:38; The windows are cut and leveled down 2 mm. The lower part of the window in the center is cut back only 1mm since this will become a door.



10:59; The four rectangular stones that stick out underneath the upper windows are cut. A delicate part since I have to cut a rectangular strip around these stones.



11:11; The horizontal beam that runs behind the three windows is cut and while adding this I have to bring down the surrounding area 1 mm at brick/basic level.



11:38; The upper part is cut around the window and decorative trim. These areas are cut back at brick/basic level. While doing so I add the lower situated horizontal beam below the window straight away.



So far so good. At this stage it is time for lunch break. The most important and also the rough cutting stage is finished. I now can start to add detail in to the facade. It is also the first time that I put the first Baroque facade alongside this one just to see the two sides of the house to be together.



12:30; After lunch break I start drawing the windows in using a pencil and ruler. In this case it is a matter of counting the mm from window pane to window pane.



13:07; Working from bottom to top once again I start cutting the tiny windows one by one. The first stage is to make the horizontal and vertical cuts in each window. (256 in total)



14:22; The next stage is to scratch each window in the same diagonal direction. Fun to do but I have to take time outs every 6 to 8 windows or so because of cramps in my hand.



14:47; After brushing all the loose plaster off I carve the edges of every tiny window once again to get nice sharp edges. Below you see facade after scratching and before and after the sharp edge excersize.



15:10; The door is being cut. In this case I split the surface up in six squares and add sloped edges on each of the six panels in the door.



15:32; The inner part of the three archways are cut back about 1 mm.



15:57; The vertical beams alongside the windows are slightly cut back on both sides. Another delicate process since the edges are only 1 to 1.5 mm wide and cut back 1mm as well.
The same exercise on the windows on the first floor.



16:18; The horizontal beam below the three top windows is getting the same trim as the vertical window beams.



16:35; The decorative curls on either side of the facade are carved. Another delicate action is cutting back the height of the window edges leaving an elevated area at the top corners of each window.



17:58; On to the top part of the facade. I cut the decorative forms after I draw some guide lines with a pencil. Next phase is to scratch the decoration and do the round window in the top of the facade. The utmost top is also getting its detail now.
I try to make a facade that looks quite alike the original one. I have to deal with the material however. Plaster can be used to work at a certain level of detail. At this moment my skills are fairly well represented in this facade. This means that some detail is left out in this facade. Then again I Am learning every day so who knows.



With the more detailed cutting run done I am only left with edding the brick structure and wood structure o the facade.



18:23; The brick structure is done using a ruler to measure out the height of each brick row as well as cutting nice straight lines. The first cut is very thin alongside the ruler a second and third one are done free hand. I build the stone structure up from the bottom up. The bricks are about 4mm in height.



In the end:

I managed to cut the facade in one day. I started around 7:45 in the morning and 11 hours later I have this facade lying in front of me. A nice and satisfying experiment but not something I would like to repeat in this way. The pressure of finishing the facade in one day isn't motivating for me. I am pleased with the result and that I did it in one day but it would be more fun doing it in a more moderate tempo with more breaks. I am quite happy with the facade itself if I may say so.

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