Marble Finishing Techniques
Marble Finishing Techniques
Instructors: Steve Shaheen, with guests Sebastian Martorana, Peter Glenn Oakley and Alasdair Thomson
The last 10% of a stone sculpture can elevate the piece to greatness, or ruin it. Learning how to finish marble properly is its own art, but means something different for every sculpture, from creating a high gloss polish on an abstract form, to rendering realistic skin and hair on a figurative portrait. Historically, marble workshops would have an expert specialized in finishing techniques. Today, proper finishing is often overlooked or rushed, and classes sometimes don't get around to covering it.
This workshop is designed to do just that: all aspects of finishing a marble sculpture will be covered, including "clean up" chiseling, scraping, using abrasive stones, steel and diamond rasps, sandpaper, loose abrasives, antiquing, and polishing (both manual and mechanical). The use of sealers, waxes and stains will also be discussed.
This online course will give students exclusive access to video tutorials, a live webinar with four expert marble sculptors, and one-on-one video mentoring (full details below).
Course Components
1. Video Tutorials (to be published by September, 2020)
Participants will be given exclusive access to video demonstrations covering the following topics:
• General overview of finishing process, plus things to avoid earlier in the sculpting process that make finishing more difficult
• Correct use of abrasive stones
• Rasps (steel and diamond)
• Sandpapers (which ones to use, and how/when to use them)
• Polishing (both manual and mechanical)
• Sealers, waxes, stains, antiquing
These video demonstrations will remain evergreen resources which can be reviewed anytime.
2. Live Webinar - TBD August / September, 2020
This 1.5-hour group Zoom webinar will be hosted by lead instructor Steve Shaheen, who will answer questions and take us for studio visits with master sculptors Sebastian Martorana, Peter Glenn Oakley and Alasdair Thomson. The work of these three artists illustrate there are different modes of thinking around what it means to "resolve" a sculpture: they each use texture differently (whether it’s a straight polish, or trying to replicate the texture of leather, stuffed animals, metal, etc.), and they have even pioneered techniques to help achieve desired results. Some of their work:
3. One-on-One Mentoring - scheduled individually
Each participant will get a one-on-one consultation session with Steve Shaheen, where projects can be looked at and discussed. This meeting can be up to fifteen minutes and scheduled anytime between registration for the course and September 1, 2020.