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February 09, 2007

Figurative Sculpture (Piece 2)

Pictures are up for the relief I sculpted. It's not the finished piece, it still needs to be cleaned out a bit more, some holes should probably be patched and some bumps sanded, and there should be a finishing coat of some sort on it.

This piece was more of an involved process than the last one, spanning over four classes - roughly 12 hours of work. We started with a clay base on which we sculpted our model. I thought the pose was great because her body was slightly twisted, with her left side closer to me than her right. The twist makes the left slightly higher on the relief. On top of that, the protruding arm was interesting to do as well. I found I was constantly looking at her sides to make sure the depths of different landmarks were correctly proportioned. I also picked up a new technique of using burlap to run over the clay to add texture to the body. Something about the texture works to pull the piece together better than it was when the clay was just smooth - It looked much more disjointed then.

Once the sculpting was finished, the next step was to make a negative. We used plaster of paris for the rest of the work on the piece. We started by making an indicator coat, mixing the plaster with some paint so we could identify where the mold ended. (That's the rust color that still needs to be cleaned off the piece.) From there, we built up the rest of the negative till it looked like a cake covered in icing. The clay was removed and we were left with our negative. It was at this point that my cast cracked slightly. You can see it on the bottom left corner of the piece - there's a slight crack running across and some pockmarks on the left butt cheek. I actually like the added feature - it adds character to the piece.

After cleaning out the mould, we coated the inside with Vasoline and Murphy's Oil (to act as a releasing agent). We then filled the inside with plaster and a layer of plaster coated burlap for strength. Once that hardened, we used chisels to chip away the negative, which left us with the piece.

I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. It's surprising how well the finer details of surface texture transfered over. I like the shoulder blades, the little flex of flesh above the right hip and the overall shape of the butt and hips.

Labels: Art

Posted at 1:45 PM
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