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The Hirst Art Studies | Miniatures 

Introduction:

There is a nice story to this second wooden facade. The picture I found of this face in the Digital Amsterdam Archives doesn’t show the wall structure well enough. My first impression was that this was a wooden house since the form of the facade strongly resembles the first wooden facade I made. With this in mind I started working on the facade.
At the end of Summer last 2009 we spend a whole day on a small open boat with a music and BBQ having lots of fun in the Amsterdam Canals. I made a lot of pictures of all the party folk and occasionally of the surroundings. In one of these pictures I saw this facade. A partially wood and partially stone one. The fun thing about it is that the facade exists still and although it is a more recent one than I assumed it is still an interesting facade that is also interesting when sculpted as a complete wooden structure.



The sculpting process:

This facade started with a temporary casting form (as usual). In this case this was quite a time saver since parts are sticking out quite a bit. The proof that it really was a temporary casting form is shown in the picture below.
In this early stage I placed the freshly cast facade next to the finished wooden one so here are the two facades that will make up one house later on.



The first stage is to bring down the extension on the first floor to better proportions. This part sticks out too much to my liking so I simply used a fine saw and cut chunks of plaster off. Once this was done I draw the basic lines on to the facade and the actual sculpting can start.



First I cut back all the window and door parts.



Next stage is to draw and cut the window structures up until the tiny little glass windows (242 in total)



I draw the wooden plank structure on the facade but before I start carving them I finish the brick and wood structure on the ground floor level.



Working my way up carving the wooden planks I reach the area of the pointy roof at the first floor. I cut the horizontal lines first. After that I cut every horizontal strip in an oblique way where I remove more plaster from the upper part of the strip. Repeating this for all the horizontal strips. I then cut the vertical line turning the strips in to roof tiles.



next I start doing the wooden grain structure in all the planks on the ground floor up. Finally I add the wooden plank and grain structure in and around the arch.



The final part is done making cutting tiles on the top of the facade.
Again I place the facade next to the wooden facade I did earlier. I think they make a fine pair.

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