I use carvex and I prefer blue. There’s nothing wrong with building
up soft wax and even sculpting wax, which is like clay. I just don’t
care for that method, myself.
Asid from layout tools that have already been mentioned, I use:
A jeweler’s saw with around a #6 blade - that’s like a coping saw. A
four-sided rasp for real roughing. An old Grobet 00 1/2 rd. ring
file. A set of needle files that aren’t marked but maybe they are #0
or #1 cut.
I got a set of Grobet seconds at Otto Frei for cheap, many years
ago. I have about 25 gravers of which I actually use about 6 most all
the time.
Flat and point are especially useful in wax. There are many methods
for using them beside putting the handle in your palm and pushing on
them, but that’s another story.
I have many burs and drills and a flex shaft. Mine are no different
from anybody else’s, I just have lots of them.
And…that’s about it. I really don’t feel like I’m missing
anything. We have a wax pen. No offense to anybody, but I’ve seen
the inside ring reamers - the ultimate gadget, to me. If you like
the idea, you could add that, I suppose.
It’s much more about visualization, layout and technique (ability
with one’s hands) than tools, in this case.
David was designed to be seen from below looking up at a sharp
angle, so head and hands are deliberately oversized.
To understand the design we have to be familiar with David and
Goliath story. I am not going to tell it here, but the major point is
that when David asked for permission to fight Goliath, the king Saul
was somewhat dubious, until he was told that David kill a lion with
his bare hand in order to save a sheep that the lion had attacked.
The whole idea of the sculpture is the contrast between undeveloped
body of a youth and powerful hands. Of course it took Michelangelo
talent to harmonize the whole thing. The perspective explanation is
not correct. I suspect it was concocted to eliminate religious
undertones of the work.
Except for those over sized hands... looks weird... David was
designed to be seen from below looking up at a sharp angle, so head
and hands are deliberately oversized
That’s one theory, and it’s still being contested. One of the main
points against this theory, is that the hands are the same size, and
if they were to be viewed at an extreme angle they would look
disproportionate. I just did a couple of perspective changes on an
image of David, and no matter how steep I make the view it just
still looks weird.
Another theory (which I think is more plausible) is that because
marble was expensive, other statues were purchased to be re-sculpted.
If the purchaser liked existing components they were left on. The
history of this statue supports this as Michaelangelo was not the
first artist to touch that stone, and it was sitting idle for a long
time before he actually did sculpt the statue.
Adding to John Donivan’s wax carving tool list- an x-acto knife with
a #11 blade. I can be used for scraping surfaces, cutting or carving
fine detail. There are probably as many favorite tools as there are
wax carvers, however.
I’m going with Leonid. My late father Alan Haemer was a painter and
professor of fine art at the University of Oregon. He always told us
that the hardest thing in the word to paint is an adolescent. Because
their features are still moulding and a bit nebulous. He would use
David as an example. He told us that David’s hands and feet were
outsized just like a teenage boy’s are when he hasn’t quite grown
into them. He said also notice the nose. It’s there but still not
quite as defined as an adult.
On the issue of the perspective of the viewer… I helped build
the statue Portlandia which is about two to three stories tall and
perched on the second story of the Michael Graves Portland Building.
Her head was down sized and torso shortened from the model by 10% to
keep it from looking as of she was looming over us.