Progress continues ⚒️🏃🏻♂️
At this phase I’m using just hammer and chisel and sand paper. It’s a very slow process but worth it for the control it provides.
I read once that Michelangelo’s early carving, Madonna of the Stairs, took him between two and three years to complete, and it’s no wonder why. Reliefs are different than sculpting in the round. I’m starting to think of it as less sculpting stone and more as the sculpting of light and shadow.
With a classic statue, you create something in three dimensions. Still very difficult, but you don’t have to create the illusion of depth. With reliefs, it’s more akin to painting, or rather, halfway in between. You get to play in three dimensions, but you’re constrained in the third dimension and have to create more depth than there actually is.
