Following on in the quest for a perfect raven sculpture Martin has drawn his intended subject side on and full scale at 22” from tip of tail to tip of beak. Using old school techniques to maintain the bird’s proportions he drew the raven on a 1” size grid and then increased the grid to 2” to achieve the correct size. While this could have been done in photo-shop with a grid tool, the size of the piece would have made it cumbersome.
He will now need to draw the front elevation, plan and top view so that he can correctly show the leg stance and wing position and capture the birds pre-flight position with the wings slightly apart.
Finding a captive raven to study for the other elevations has not been easy but we have found 4 ravens who are residents at the Big Bear zoo so will be travelling there soon to get some footage for the next stage.
Martin will be carving the raven in basswood which is a tight grain but relatively soft easy to carve hard wood. At this point he plans to carve the bird as whole sculpture to ensure its correctness from all elevations. Once it looks correct and mindful of the cost of and weight of bronze he will then cut the sculpture down the middle so that he can carve out the center and thus make the sculpture hollow.
