Purpose of a maquette

Why would you sculpt a maquette. For us sculptors a maquette or clay sketch is a 3 dimensional representation to guide us when we work on our full size piece. Working solely from a drawing can produce some issues during the progress of the piece. Some 2D artwork doesn't transfer as easily to 3 dimensions so this is where a maquette comes in handy to save time making a smaller piece.

Maquettes also have many of uses and are only limited to your imagination. They can help with concepts, character  expression, pose, structure, etc.

When i worked on my Monster Squad Gillman piece i created a maquette for all of those reasons listed above. I made a 1:3 sculpture to show fans what i was planning on creating. I also used it learn how i would build up the creature, the structure of the character, the expression i was going to use (i tried out a couple emotions), the pose, and how he would look in 3 dimensions making sure he was interesting from all angles.

Here is the clay sketch i did for the Gillman. I tilted the head and shoulders to produce 2 looks.

Here is the final piece.

Thanks for reading and i hope this helps fellow artists out there. Please feel free to comment below or contact me with questions or future topic requests.

Brian