Sculpting Tadzio

I am a drawer at heart, so most projects start from there. Even when I’m working on a 3D project, I still start by drawing on a 2D sheet of paper. Once I’ve worked out a basic composition there, I quickly move to a small-scale maquette, using fine white modeling wax. It’s a soft material, so it’s easy to get a sketch down without spending too much time. Using the maquette and a number of stills from the film, I then started working on the life-size sculpture. There are a number of reasons why I decided to use plaster. First of all, I love working with a material that starts with powder and ends like soft stone. There is also something about the texture of plaster that creates a classical look when you build it up and carve it back. I was also confident that plaster could be painted to look like aging bronze. Furthermore, plaster is white, which means you can see detail far more easily, which is essential in the sculpting process.

I made a simple armature to create the basic shape, then applied the first layer using cloth mesh soaked with plaster. After that, I added more layers of wet plaster and slowly built up, all the while making measurements and comparing proportions. With a live model, of course, it’s necessary to check proportions and features over and over from countless angles. It’s an intense process, and it’s made that much harder when using only photos.  So the looking, checking, and comparing was even more critical and took longer than would normally be the case. Over the course of nearly a month, gradually the face shape and features were built up, carved away, and refined with fine sandpaper until they looked and felt right, and until finally I was satisfied that the portrait was convincing and, above all, recognizable.