I think I saw the 1946 La Belle et la Bete movie, by Jean Cocteau, on TV when I was eleven or twelve. Whenever I first saw it, it made a lasting impression. I’d never seen anything like it. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it highly. The lead characters' complex relationship is something I’ve been wanting to explore for many years. Early in 2006, I started nibbling away at it. As I worked on Belle, the rest of it came together. I knew who these characters were and how I wanted to present a relationship of interdependence, the lure and power of sexual attraction and the duality of appearance vs. content. What I hadn’t worked out then, was how to get her up in the air.1: I worked Belle directly in wax but needed to do a few clay studies for Bete. He had to be physically imposing, a giant, but restrained, introspective and shy. My two main sources of inspiration were gorillas and Karloff.
2: After a set of waste molds, I poured a set of waxes and began finish work. The pix of this part has been tool toleranced toward a final rub finish.
3: Working the wax arms and legs to the body, making sure everything lined up and the balance was right.
4: Pix of Bete’s Master Wax head. I had to keep checking the tilt and eye direction so when it was all put together, his gaze was where it was supposed to be.
5: Pix of the Master Wax of Belle’s head. I was kind of proud of the finish of that head at a half an inch. But that’s before I saw some of the work by a few sculptors who specialize in miniatures I’d always felt, a good miniature never gives away its scale. Belle’s head looks like a small scale sculpt. Some of the stuff I’ve seen on the web lately is frighteningly good. You’d be hard pressed to guess just how big or small the sculpts are.
6: I needed to test my theory of support. Using the unfinished waxes, I hammered out a length or armature wire and wrinkled and bend it to look like heavy ribbon. It worked surprisingly well. I refined it a bit more, did a sag test, refined a bit more and went with it.
7: The first set of castings of the base and Bete, making sure things were still where they were supposed to be, before a final finish and priming for paint. Both arms had to come off to make it castable. I cut his left arm at a place I knew would be easy to patch. His right arm was a bit more tricky, so I used an arm band to mask the join. The shape of the band keyed the arm in the right position. For the base, I built a KromeKote circular dam and filled it with resin. Sanded, glazed the pin holes and gave it a good coat of primer then worked the rock formations on top of it. I wanted a kind of Frazetta texture for the rocks and so sculpted and finished them in clay. Then molded the whole damn thing.
8: It seemed right that a bat-winged woman would have prehensile feet. The glove was a design solution so I could use a large ring in scale with the ribbon.
The last three pix are of the Paint Master. I wanted to break up the texture of the piece, so used tufts of model grass to add some wispy, lighter elements.
5: Pix of the Master Wax of Belle’s head. I was kind of proud of the finish of that head at a half an inch. But that’s before I saw some of the work by a few sculptors who specialize in miniatures I’d always felt, a good miniature never gives away its scale. Belle’s head looks like a small scale sculpt. Some of the stuff I’ve seen on the web lately is frighteningly good. You’d be hard pressed to guess just how big or small the sculpts are.
6: I needed to test my theory of support. Using the unfinished waxes, I hammered out a length or armature wire and wrinkled and bend it to look like heavy ribbon. It worked surprisingly well. I refined it a bit more, did a sag test, refined a bit more and went with it.
7: The first set of castings of the base and Bete, making sure things were still where they were supposed to be, before a final finish and priming for paint. Both arms had to come off to make it castable. I cut his left arm at a place I knew would be easy to patch. His right arm was a bit more tricky, so I used an arm band to mask the join. The shape of the band keyed the arm in the right position. For the base, I built a KromeKote circular dam and filled it with resin. Sanded, glazed the pin holes and gave it a good coat of primer then worked the rock formations on top of it. I wanted a kind of Frazetta texture for the rocks and so sculpted and finished them in clay. Then molded the whole damn thing.
8: It seemed right that a bat-winged woman would have prehensile feet. The glove was a design solution so I could use a large ring in scale with the ribbon.
The last three pix are of the Paint Master. I wanted to break up the texture of the piece, so used tufts of model grass to add some wispy, lighter elements.
Always loved this piece, great to see the wip shots too.
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