Definition
The word maquette comes from a French source. It originally meant unfinished architectural piece or a "small scale of a sculpture." According to the glossary on the Tate Gallery website, smaller more impromptu versions of sculptures or mosaics are often highly valued by art buyers. This is because the quickly made prototype is a likely to capture the immediacy of the creative moment. If the artist creates a series of maquettes, the process through which the idea was developed is visible.
Valuable Teaching Resource
Teachers can use developmental maquettes to explain to students how creative ideas are visualised. Understanding this process will stimulate creative ideas and encourage novel approaches to planning when students design their projects.
Why Maquettes Are Used
By creating a small inexpensive version of the real thing, artists can show collaborators what artworks will look like, without wasting the time and money it would require to make a test run of the real thing. The maquette is usually smaller than the proposed artwork, but sometimes it is made to scale, but more cheaply or with less painstaking care.
The Creative Process
In some ways, a maquette is similar to a cartoon sketch, or gesture drawing. They are often developed from drawings and rapid sketches. The process of moving from gesture drawings to maquettes allows the artist, or collaborative groups of artists, to visualise and test compositions, shapes and ideas. This enables conversations between people collaborating on the design. Dialogues can take place via such methods as email review, video conferencing and similar technology. Eventually the artwork emerges from the process, refined and solidified.
If needed, and because of the ease, small scale and affordability of the temporary work, the artist can create several maquettes. The collaborative visualisation process can be made even more powerful when combined with digital photography. A digital photographed maquette can be "virtually placed" into a digital photograph of the planned environment. Artists work in a computer art programme such as Photoshop to manipulate layers so that they appear relative in size. This means that viewers can see what a range of proposals would "virtually look like." The group can mix and match from the array of virtual options.
Collaborative Process
This is an exciting way for a community artist to prepare a community group or class for a collaborative project.
The Benefits of the Process
- The group can use the experience of making a maquette to develop working relationships. Roles and styles can be nutted out before the "real" project begins.
- Through a process of facilitation, the group can be encouraged to visualise a product. This gives group members some idea of the projected outcome. Collaborators can have a say about how the project will develop.
- With facilitation, group members can learn about the process of developing an idea, which is a valuable planning tool for their repertoire.
- During the process, teachers are able to model working styles. By the time the actual piece is ready for production all members will have acquired skills. They should be feeling, comfortable and confident.
- Groups find time and space to settle into roles and ascertain what is achievable.
- Group members have the opportunity to opt in or choose to drop out based on their informed experience gained on the mini-trial run. This means the final core group of students will be confident, engaged and committed to the project, by the time it is ready to commence.
Maquettes play a vital role in the planning of large-scale artworks. They are valuable for artists, who work in community as tools of negotiation. They are a great teaching resource for creative arts teachers when they converse with students about the creative process and how to think about design.
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