The Making of the Rupert Thorneloe Bronze

This Blog is about a commission I received to produce a commemorative sculpture of LT Colonel Rupert Thorneloe. The basic brief was to create a 12 inch tall figure, in full combat kit, on a base with text, all in bronze.

Lt Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, MBE. 

Commanding Officer 1st Battalion Welsh Guards

In this blog I will go through the steps needed to produce this piece of work, beginning with the initial modelling right through to the final casting and finishing. I hope that this will be an insight into the amount of work that goes into a bronze figurative sculpture.

Where to begin?

Creating the armature. I knew that I needed to create a 12 inch figure, so to do this I needed to create an armature to hold up my sculpting material.

 

Ideally you would start off by measuring the person and working out proportions etc. This was not an option as sadly, Rupert was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, so the first thing I did was find  a proportion guide on the Internet, I typed in 'male proportions' into an image search and found this guide  on  www.idrawdigital.com  and I believe that it is from Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis. Using Photoshop, I scaled up the image to 12 inches and this formed the basis of my armature.

 

I didn't have any thick armature wire when I started this project but I did have thin wire. Using my trusty drill and a vice I twisted the wire to make a thicker gauge that would suit.

 

 

 

 

 

Using the printed proportion guide and my new wire, I cut and bent lengths to shape and the easiest way to do this was to lay the wire directly onto the paper, forming the limbs, spine, and chest etc.

 

The armature would not stand on it's own and with the additional weight of the modelling material it would just collapse. To overcome this, it is standard practise to use a brace, in this case I used aluminium armature wire that was too thick for the body but perfect for the support.

The brace is screwed to the board and the feet have extra wire which is fed through pre-drilled holes holding the whole structure securely.

Then to start adding the plastercine. I started by blocking out the main shapes and trying to establish the pose. The pose was pre-determined as I was working from a specific photo.

 

Below: This image is the basis of my sculpture. The quaility of the photo is poor but the print out I was using was clear.

 

 



Starting To Add Some Details

Above: Here I am starting to lay out the basic clothing folds and creases, the photo I have only has the figure from the front so reference photos and using a mirror is the only way I can model the back. Artistic License is a handy thing.

Using the aforementioned reference material, I started adding finer clothing details, a quick internet search led me to the image above of a soldier in kit, and as the figure I am modelling is wearing pretty much the same gear, it was perfect to use as a modelling guide.

POCKETS, FOLDS AND BELT

These images show the trouser folds with the pockets, as well as the belt with loops. With this sculpture it is very important to me to try and re-create the details as exact as I can. 

BOOT PROGRESSION

These images show how the boots progressed throughout the modelling process.

 
The first boots I modelled were over sized and I needed to cut them down considerably. The laces were painstakingly rolled out and threaded left over right etc.

FLAK JACKET

 

Once again, reference photos have come in very handy when trying to model this flak jacket. From the 'pose' photo I can see that there is an important couple of details that may or may not relate to the specific soldier I am modelling, but as they are in his photos they will be on my sculpt; these details include a pen and a brush, which I assume was for cleaning his rifle. In the photos you can see that they are white compared to the plasticine, this is due to the fact they are made from FIMO which is a type of clay that can be hardened in the oven.

The flak jacket and details like the pouches a pips needed to be done before I modelled the arms as it was easier to get to. Above: You can see the basic flak jacket cut out as a flat sheet with the minimal of details placed over the figure like a tabard with the additional front chest piece added after. Below: You can see strapping that I started to add, also note the little dent-type creases in the jacket and pouches that help to give the sculpture some life.

 

Flack Jacket Back



 Above: The plain flak jacket is broken up by the addition of the strapping that spans the back of the soldier.

Below: These images show how I went about making the side panels of the flak jacket. Using scale photos I was able to measure and cut sheet plasticine to size and add details like the seams and creases, see image 3.

In image 4 you can see the thin strips that I had cut to act as the straps, these were stippled with a stiff paintbrush (image 5) to give the impression of a velcro style fabirc. Then to finish off, the straps were given a sewn seam style detail with a stainless steel modelling tool (image 6).

Modelling The Rifle

One important item in a soldier's kit, is, of course his rifle. The soldier I am sculpting has a SA80 rifle in his possession. The difficulty I had with sculpting this was that it needed to be rigid to withstand the modelling that went on around it (the arms etc). For the gun I opted to use Fimo as I had previously done with the brush and pen.

With FIMO, the object you have made can be placed in an oven at something like 110 degrees centigrade for 30 mins and this hardens it. In future I think I would actually model the gun from cut plastic strips and tubing as FIMO is quite spongy, which ultimately softens some of the detail.

Arms

Modelling the arms and hands begins with roughing out the main shapes with sausages and blobs of plasticine. These are then refined and the fine details added after.



In the images above you can see how a little bit of detail goes along way; the addition of the padding to the back of the glove gives a real authenticity.

The images below show the pocket on the arm with regimental badge, the additional straps and some more of the finer detail work I have done on the back.

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