Notice the subtle differences between the three statues of battling male figures wrestling at the top of the page. The one on the left is a faux marble painted small version of the statue, the one on the far right is the actual famous original sculpture in a museum in Italy, and the one in the middle is our sculpture enlargement based on the ten inch tall small version enlarged to sixty inches tall - a six times statue enlargement! Technically, this was a third generation sculpture [a sculpture of a sculpture of a sculpture], all sculpted by completely different artists. The beauty of having a different artists remake a masterpiece each go around is that they can put their own sculpting style into it, giving it a slightly modernized look, while at the same time retaining its original classic art appeal.

One of our clients requested an enlargement of the famous classic wrestling sculpture of Hercules and Diomedes grappling. Because there weren't any large versions of this statue available for sale we decided to have it sculpted from scratch by our art department. If you look carefully at the old carved bone plate picture you can see one standing male figure holding another male figure upside down while four man-eating horses are chewing on him. Fortunately, our sculpture enlargement was based on the smaller statue already in existence, and not the rather grotesque plaque art scene. Our sculptor worked on the enlargement using a ten inch tall version of the Hercules wrestling Diomedes statue by placing it at the same angle of perspective while sculpting each side of the enlarged artwork. By using a previously existing statue we could skip the step of make a maquette and go right into creating the final sculpture enlargement directly in clay.

When a sculptor is working in clay [that will later be fired later on] it must be made as hollow as possible to reduce the weight and increase the ventilation when using clay almost exclusively as your support material. As you may well know, wet clay provides virtually no structural support until it dries, but it must be wet to easily sculpt with it. Therein lies the skill of a clay sculptor that must manage the dryness and wetness levels of various sections of their artwork in addition to sculpting. A sculptor must be patient when creating an all clay sculpture so as to build it only as fast as it can harden and provide structural support for additional clay that must be added on top, especially for a statue of such large proportions. Originally, the enlarged sculpture was going to be fired in a kiln, but then it became quite difficult to find a kiln large enough to fit the statue. Instead, the enlarged Hercules wrestling Diomedes sculpture was molded and reproduced in reinforced concrete with a classic faux bronze painted finish and delivered to our client. Let us know if there is a sculpture that you want made and we will check with our art department what it will take to have it done.