Historical Background

The original from from an 1890 photograph at Notre Dame de Paris, if it ever falls off and breaks, I will have an exact duplicate for the stone carvers to follow.

You can see how worn it is now, it was sculpted in 1850 so this picture is from the 161st birthday of this Limestone Carving of a Dragon. Wear is considerable, but taken in context, it's amazing the density of the limestone they were able to find and use then. Now, reproductions on the cathedral are made of a limestone that lasts about 60 years.

My Latest Progress on the Model, currently about 70 pounds.  I will mold and make a bronze when I'm done with the stone carving.

Part VI

The Clay Model is now complete.  It actually came out very nicely.  The issue I am having now is the model is bigger than the piece of stone I'm carving.  This is proving to be challenging.   Avoid this by making your model exactly the size you intend on carving, translating the difference in stone is difficult and makes the work harder.

I like this clay model so much, I'm thinking of expanding it through the body and on the corner piece like the original.  Then cut it in half, scoop it out like a baked potato, then making a rubber and plaster mold. 

This will allow me to create a reusable mold, and perhaps a bronze version of this Gargouille.

Here in the face, the stone carving is starting to take some shape.  This detail work in such soft stone is really hard to do.  I have not cut under the neck yet, I'm afraid!  Structurally I'm going to lose the tongue, there just was no way to do this in such a small piece of stone.  

Part V

Here are some additional photos showing where the Gargouille is taking shape. 

I'm going to take a slight detour at this point.  Making a mistake in stone is well, usually unrecoverable.  So I'm going to take a few days and sculpt the face out of clay.  This way I will have a model to work from as I continue to carve the features.  This will help make the work easier, and less prone to mistakes.

Here is a picture of the sculpting after three hours.  I should finish this on Wednesday of this week.  I'm holding a picture of the original next to this sculpture so you can see where I'm going with it.

Part IV

At this point, I'm starting to do the actual sculpting.  I've removed most of the "bulk" material, and things are starting to get dangerous!  One mistake here could ruin the whole piece, so lets just say things are getting stressfull now.   This is still a profile view, one of the challenges with this project is, there are no front views of this statue in Paris.  At least I have never found any on the internet, and I have stood on the roof of notre dame in Paris and I can't see how you could view the front of this piece. 

From this profile view I need to start sculpting the actual face, I'm twisting my mind around this and trying to imagine what the face would look like.

Design Note:  The back portion of the limestone I selected has partial drill holes where the slab was mined.  I've decided to leave the back as it is.  At the Cathedrals of Europe, when a piece is recarved to replace an existing carving, it almost certainly has been removed or fallen leaving this type of surface on the backs of the drain pipes, gargoyles, etc.   This is very natural so I have decided to keep that look, as if the piece came off the side of a Cathedral.

(The above links are very interesting, take the time to click on them and read about these subjects.)

Here I have drawn the Face of the Piece, or what I imagine it looks like.  I'm about to start roughing out some front sections.  You will start to see the Gargouille emerge from the stone. 



Part III

Just finished another four hour session with this stone carving project.  I failed to mention where the lab is, where I'm doing this work.  I'm working at the Creative Arts Center of Dallas.  http://www.creativeartscenter.org/  It's a repurposed elementary school built in the 50's that was purchased by the CAC and turned into an artists lab.  Metal Sculpture, Ceramics, Stone, Glass, Painting.  Fantastic environment with lots of other artists around to share ideas with.

In the photos below, you can see where I started to rough out the shape.  I removed some major parts of the stone across the front with manual and pneumatic chisels.  I used a diamond studded grinder to create slices in the stone, then used a chisel to punch out stone at those weak spots. 

In this picture you can see the basic shape of the beak, brow, forehead, and neckline coming into view.  This process is about using violent tools (Grinders, Three-Tooth Chisels, Heavy Hammers) to remove as much as the bulk material as you can.

 

In this picture, you see where I'm roughing out the base (this statue looks over a church corner, with an architectural base) chest, starting to make progress on exposing the beak while maintaining the neck structure.  It's important to not go too deep into the neck or base points now, these are now weak spots.  They need to be carefully carved from this point on or you run the risk of the piece breaking at one of those weak spots.

Part II

Here is an example of what I mean by longitudinal lines.  You have to keep the aspect ratio aligned, this is how you do it. 

Tools Used

• Three Pound Hammer
• Steel Chisels (You can use Carbide, but I don't.  see below)
• Pneumatic Hammers (Big, Medium, then Small)
• Pneumatic Steel Chisels
• Pencil
• T-Square
• Ruler
• Diamond Grinder Wheel
• Rasps
• Sand Paper

Good Place to Find Tools:  http://www.2sculpt.com/

Step 1: Selecting the Stone.  Limestone comes in several different types.  I needed firm and solid.
Step 2: Draw what you plan on carving
Step 3: Rough Out major gaps (Grinder)
Step 4: Begin to rough out smaller more complex areas (Pneumatic Hammer)
Step 5: Redraw image in three dimensions (draw the front view)

Project: Notre Dame Paris Gargouille

Welcome to my First Post on my Gothic Stone Carver Blog.   The current project I'm working on is one of my favorite dragon gargouille's from the Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris. 

I started this project by selecting a rectangular piece of Texas Limestone.  This stone is hard within the family of limestones, which are generally soft stones.  This particular stone has no "holes" or shell gaps.  Pretty solid.  For those of you new to stone carving, Limestone is made up of the exoskeletans of sea creatures large and small.  Everything from coral, mollusks, etc.  It is calcium-based so it is not toxic to breath in, but you would still want to use a breathing mask while grinding.  While calcium is used by the body, filling your lungs with the stuff would not feel very good. 

I started by doing a side free-hand drawing of my interpretation of this Gargouille (French for Gargoyle, well sort of) - note technical grotesque history another time.    As you can see from this picture, free-handing the carving is only intended to help you understand where major cuts are to be.  You will draw, redraw, and redraw some more many times over the course of the process of carving.

It's important to create Longitudinal lines on either three or four sides of the piece.  These are east-west lines that help you to be consistent on removing bulk material without disturbing the horizontal lines of the work.

NOTE: Part II coming tomorrow.  There should be 10-15 parts to this process, stay tuned!