Stone sculptures

Carré d'artistes presents a wide selection of stone sculptures that can be both decorative objects and collection pieces. Stone carving is a technique of transforming a piece of stone or rough rock into an artistic masterpiece. And among the materials used in sculpture, stone is one of the oldest.

Stone sculpture: an ancient and authentic know-how

The complexity of the work of the stone allows in the medium to gauge the quality of an artist, but also of his work. And to create a stone sculpture, it emerges a certain supposed complexity expressed in two aspects. One is that stone art is three-dimensional work and the other is that it is a hard-to-work material.

Today there are many artisans who perpetuate and constantly improve the way of carving stone. This gives rise to mixed works having both contemporary and modern features.

The different stages of the elaboration of a stone sculpture

In Stone Art, it is important to distinguish between a stone sculptor and a stonemason. The first, shapes blocks of stones or rocks and necessarily follows a process of artistic shaping of the stone in order to give birth to a sculpture. While the stonemason shapes the pieces of stone, which are used for sculpting, building, architecture, etc.

However, to design a stone sculpture, there are different phases, namely the choice of stone, the execution of the roughing, cutting, refining and finishing.

The choice of stone

The type of stone that will make up the sculpture is the first thing to determine for the sculptor. Depending on the desired result, the artist has the choice between hard stone and soft stone. Thus, there are works in marble, plaster, limestone, sandstone, basalt or even marble.

Once the stone is chosen, the artisan then selects a piece larger than the final sculpture.

Drafting

To get to the heart of the matter, the sculptor gets rid of unnecessary blocks of stone after having produced a rough outline on paper. Depending on his technique, he has the choice of using either a chisel, a pointerolle, a stone chisel or all three in turn.

Pruning

Before starting to cut the stone, the artist observes the stone in order to know the direction of its bed. The lines of the final sculpture are then drawn on the block of stone. This last line is used to work the stone going from the edges to the centre.

Refining

The refining stage consists, after determining the shape of the sculpture, in refining the silhouette of the work with a gouge or a toothed chisel.

Finishing

Finishing essentially consists of eliminating all the imperfections present on the work. Basically, it is to file down the stone. This phase consists, among other things, of eliminating the various traces of scissors and revealing the details.

At Carré d'artistes, discover stone sculptures designed by artists each with a different know-how, but respecting a careful and unique process.