How to make a Monument: STEP 1, Major General Harry Rockafeller

MGHR - STEP 1

With 10 basic lessons in place and clear sources of basic information located for you, I will now begin to give you a detailed description of my process on monuments.

We will go through the Major General Harry Rockafeller Project step by step.

STEP 1

If you have a commission, great...or making work, series of sculptures for yourself, great again.., this process applies.

Grab a piece of paper and pencil and write down what you want the piece to convey. List as many things as possible, adjectives, nouns, verbs, reference other sculptures or paintings from history, poems, quotes, music references, song lyrics, whatever... just write.

Fill up several pages if need be.

Look at past work, books, movies, go to museums......look over all sources.

The more time you put into this the clearer your direction will be, I believe Degas said "it is easy to hold on to an idea for a short time period but to hold that idea for a long period of time on one work of art and still have the work look spontaneous, well that is extremely difficult."

Spend 1, 2, 3, or 4 days max gathering your ideas and surround your working environment with them, print them out and write everything down... otherwise you will forget something.