The Sir Nigel Gresley clay maquette – the process

With the decision made on which pose to sculpt, the go-ahead was given. I started to sculpt the ‘final’ maquette of Sir Nigel, 35cm in height, for casting in bronze. Back came my ever-patient model, and on went the tweed suit, for some more detailed modeling in clay instead of wax.

The original wax maquette was always at my side for reference, along with my large workbook of photos of Sir Nigel and the King’s Cross site.

I am used to working at life-size, so a 35cm model is rather a challenge, especially to get any sense of a likeness. My model was great for the figure of Sir Nigel, but the head had to be based on photographs of the man.

The Mallard was sculpted separately – incredibly hard to sculpt on such a tiny scale, in clay.

Here are some of the photos of the clay maquette in progress. In the next blog I will show you the final clay maquette, ready for mould-making.