Sculpture, as Taught by Painters

I studied portrait sculpture in Florence, Italy at Charles H. Cecil Studio, a small private atelier devoted to passing on the methods and techniques of naturalistic painting. At the Studio, students are trained in techniques similar to those common in nineteenth-century art schools and artist's studios, prior to the advent of the First World War and Modern Art.

In 1996, the Studio started offering a curriculum for training sculptors based on the same body of technique used to train painters, known as the sight-size technique. Rather than a method of painting or drawing, sight-size is a method of seeing, as well as an aesthetic philospohy.

Elements of these methods have been used and developed since Alberti in the fourteenth century, and practitioners include DaVinci, Titian, Rubens, Valesquez, and John Singer Sargent. Notably absent from this partial list is the name of a sculptor. In effect, the Sculpture Department at Charles H. Cecil Studios was an experiment in transposing a very credible and effective technique for painters into a technique for working in three dimensions. It is an experiment that has met with great success, and one that continues to this day.

Due to demand for information about this unique method, I've written a studio handbook and have made it available online. You can buy a copy, as well as see some sample pages, here. It's self published, with few bells and whistles but a lot of information and images. I'm currently working on a more detailed, definitive text that will include a history of clay modelling technique taught in Europe over the last few centuries, and more. Look for is sometime in 2009.

Sculpture and the Sight-size Technique

Sight-size is a simple and supremely logical way of reproducing nature in art. Its method implies that both the artist's eyes and the model from which the artist works are essential, complex tools, requiring skill and practice for effective use.

By positioning your clay model - of say, a one-third life-size figure - a specific distance away from your model, and then stepping back from your work until both the work and the model are visually the same size, a 'side by side' comparison can be made to check accuracy and proportion.

above: illustration of the sight-size method. Notice that the sculpture will appear to the artist to be the same size as the model. In reality, the artist, sculpture, and model would usually be much further apart.

Additionally, the distance between model and artist needed for this comparison allows the artist to observe the model in one glance - that is, the artist is far enough away to take in the whole of the subject without a significant change of point of view, such as lowering the eyes to observe the feet, etc. In this way, the model is seen as a whole from the start and attention to detail gives way to a broad, unified effect, which conveys at a distance.

When an artist is said to have treated a subject broadly, it is implied that the artist has not lost sight of the 'big picture' by diluting the focus in individual details. I hold this concept of breadth to be a basic tenet of masterful work; the sight-size technique seems to be ideally suited to direct the artist towards this goal.

At first, the basic tenets of sight-size seem overly simple, and a bit obvious. In actual practice, however, it takes a good deal of discipline to adhere faithfully to it. When we wish to observe something, our natural instinct is to get as close as we can to it and the student finds himself fighting this urge at every turn.

Most art teachers instruct their pupils to step back occasionally to 'check' the work's progress; sight-size takes this visual impression at a short distance as the foundation of a working method. With some practice, one discovers the method's value, and sight-size becomes second nature.

He (the painter Sir Henry Raeburn) spoke to me in his usual brief and kindly way evidently to put me into an agreeable mood; and then having placed me on a chair on a platform at the end of his painting room, in the posture required, he set up his easel beside me with a canvas ready to receive the color. When he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas and without looking at me, wrought upon it with color for some time. Having done so he retreated in the same manner, studied my looks at a distance for another minute then came up hastily to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more.

- James Grieg, in an account of a typical portrait session with Raeburn, 1911

This theme of controlled observation extends into other areas of studio practice. Since sight-size is a completely optical approach to sculpture, light and its effects are important considerations. Degrees of light and shadow reflected off a form are the primary means of discerning any shape; therefore, it stands to reason that the model and the work being produced from that model must be lit in an identical fashion. This way, the variations in the shadow pattern between one's work and the model will belie imperfections of form in the work. This identical yet controlled lighting arrangement is best produced with large skylights and high, north-facing windows.

Many other tools and techniques are incorporated into the sight-size method, some in common practice today among representational artists, some not. Plumblines, mirrors, and straightedges are all used to further measure and understand that which we see. Mostly, though, the eyes themselves become instruments capable of uncommon perception, trained to rapidly flicker from model to work in order to search out faults. Thus, 'technique' is based in psychological processes of seeing, and an artist's individual ability to interpret and render that vision.

Aesthetics

Does all this control over environment and reliance upon model and visual images stifle expression? Only if you let it. Technical prowess is no substitute for real artistic power, but is a necessary tool if one chooses to use the human form as a vehicle for expression. The language of visual art will always have visual perception at its core.

Alberti, author of the quote above about painting 'the most beautiful things', might have said the same thing about sculpture, indeed about all the arts. This assertion may at first seem to limit the subject matter of the arts, but it does not. The 'most beautiful things' are beautiful because we comprehend them as objects full of emotional power, and relevant to our understanding of ourselves as part of humanity at large. Thus, a sculpture of a dying man nailed to a cross may be as moving and beautiful to Christians as a youthful nude might be to Pagans.

My aim as a sculptor must be to recognize as universal certain themes running deep within my own experience, seek out what is inherently beautiful, and communicate it. Although it sounds a bit grandiose when written down, it really is a simple concept, and an old one. What keeps artists like me attempting this (in the face of the fact that our endeavors are never perfect) is that this impulse toward artistic creation takes us closer to the center of who we are.