The Sandbag Soldier Takes Shape

Making some sort of progress but the whole thing is going to need a long time to dry and cure.  I am thinking of drilling some holes to help the drying process but it is a balance between that and structural integrity.

I don't really want too much anatomical correctness as I think it often detracts from the power of a piece by destroying its enigmatic qualities but once one has reached this stage some things look really odd otherwise.  If I could have halted earlier it might have been more successful but I am having to retrain myself to imagine in 3D and resist the pressure to keep refining.

I will still have to anchor it more firmly to the base and increase the depth of the chest area before adding his tunic.  I am not sure about the helmet - I might make that separately so I can see where it is best placed: on his head or in his left hand.

I must also get some drawings of a SMLE rifle - the forerunner of our No 4 rifle that we used until the SLR (based on the Belgian FN FAN rifle) came in when I was at Sandhurst.  The No 4 was an excellent weapon and so was the SLR.  My myopia did not stop me becoming a marksman but I had to use my own weapon all the time because it was carefully zeroed to match my astigmatism and my glasses.  (I cheated on the entry medical but lots of us did that)

I will give him a rest now and a chance to dry out while I get on with other things.

Do Not Go Gentle

After 15 years of not making sculpture I am returning to it with a piece whose working title is 'Do Not Go Gentle'.

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas

The piece is for 'Articles Of War', a show that the Armed Forces Art Society is putting on in the Glasgow Lighthouse in November.  It will be my last one as the Chairman (we don't have presidents) before Eve Montgomerie takes over from me fully.

I thought of the humble sandbag, millions of which were used and are still being used in wars around the globe.  That really is an 'article of war'.  (Of course articles of war are usually thought of as rules or concepts rather than things) Could I use sandbags for an art piece? The poem of course is about death - the'good night' - but also on the Western Front in WW1 a 'good night' was one without barrages, star shells or rain, when the night sky was visible in all its glory and a man could look up in wonder and perhaps forget for a moment the horror of his circumstances.

So I decided on a 'sandbag soldier' looking up into the night sky.  I have cast in plaster polymer before, using top quality materials from Tiranti, but never modelled in it.  This piece is more home-made, using sandbag material and plaster of paris that I am mixing with diluted acrylic gel as the polymerising agent.  It seems to work.  I am also using finer bandage material from First Field Dressings and triangular bandages that come in army medical kits - all 'articles of war'.

The starting point was an armature fixed to a plywood base.  Even the base comes from an old army box!

Armature with baseboard attached

I then started applying the material soaked in the polymer plaster mix.

Starting to add sandbag material and bandages

That is where I am today.  Over the next few days I hope to build on this to provide a WW1 infantryman's body holding a Short Model Lee Enfield rifle.  Then I hope to clothe it, add accoutrements and then add a final layer of pigmented plaster.  These are early days but I am hopeful and will keep posting my progress.  Even if it is a failure I will learn something and perhaps try again.