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What are the Sculptor's roles?
The Sculptor's role is to design and produce the main friezes
of the monument. These depict the many scenes from the Battle.
This is based on a lot of background research and generating
lots of ideas.
He gets very involved with the Architects and the Foundry
in the highest quality implementation in what is a very demanding
design.
The ideas stage
The first stage in any project is for Paul Day to gather
as much information as he can about the subject. In this project
he tries to understand what people went through who actually
took part in the battle. This research involves interviewing
people still alive who took part, reading many books on the subject
particularly ones from people who took part and going through
old photos and archives.
The main "understanding and ideas" phase took about
3 months but remains ongoing throughout the project.
The first sketches
Having immersed himself in the subject Paul then sits at
his drawing board and starts to produce lots of small scale "thumbnail"
sketches. These sketches are of ideas around important events
in the battle not just for the flyers but also for the
support people and the civilians caught up in the battle. He
aims to generate as many ideas around the subject as possible
as part of developing a narrative (or "storyboard")
for the monument. It is important that the monument flows with
a story and is not just separate unconnected scenes.
click to enlarge
Detailed design and models
Paul then adapts the first thumbnail sketches and produces
larger, more detailed, designs. From these he starts to build
small clay models of key parts of the design. These models are
called "maquettes". They are rudimentary versions of
the final design which do not necessarily have full detail. They
are there to help him see how the designs work in 3 dimensions,
e.g. how light and shade will fall - basically enough to see
how the ideas work.
The full design
Once he is happy with the concept designs he moves onto the
full size designs. For this he produces detailed compositional
drawings which are close to the final designs. He then starts
turning the designs into full size clay representations. For
the monument, he started with one of the 8 metre panels. These
are about 1 metre high and when finished weigh about 4 tons!
These are built on a large workbench where he constructs vertical
wood boards to support the panel and build a wall of clay on
these boards.
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Once the wall of clay is ready Paul plots the position of the
various elements on the wall, starting with the rough forms of
the shapes and gradually starts to flesh out the detail in clay,
in particular the "expressive" parts such as faces,
arms and hands.
click to enlarge
He aims to finish this panel in sections about 3 metres long
-i.e. a third of the overall panel at a time.
Before firing
Before the clay is fired to turn it into the solid "terracotta"
that is the final design, Paul has to do a lot of preparation
work. Since large pieces of clay cannot be fired successfully
he has to hollow out all the pieces behind the raised parts.
This includes cutting off all the heads, hands etc, hollowing
them out and then re-fitting them. For just one 3 metre section
just this hollowing out process took over 10 days.
The hollowed out sections then have to be left for at least
6 weeks to dry out properly before firing.
Finally any sections that stick out have to be cut off and
fired separately. Up to 80 individual pieces are fired for each
8 metre section.
Firing the clay designs
Firing is the process to finally dry out and bake the clay
so it turns into the rock hard "terracotta" we are
familiar with in earthenware crockery. This takes place in a
kiln. Since the pieces are so large and heavy this has to be
done very carefully to avoid cracking.
The firing takes place over 2 days. It starts at a relatively
low temperature for several hours to ensure the clay is very
dry. The temperature is then gradually increased to 960°C
for the firing time. The temperature is then slowly reduced and
the kiln left to cool down over another 2 days to about 100°C.
The final stage
Once Paul is happy with the fired design he then has silicon
rubber moulds taken of every piece. These mould negatives are
the "master" negative design that are sent to the foundry
for casting into bronze.
Any problems
The main problem to overcome is the large size of the pieces
combined with very intricate detail this is unusual for
a design of this size.
The only "near miss" was a new kiln installed to
cope with the large sizes of the pieces. Unfortunately the chimney
didn't work correctly on the first firing and everything came
out covered in black soot. However Paul managed to clean it all
and everything was saved.
Next Steps
To see how the foundry turns these designs into actual bronze
castings, click here.
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