Sculpture 1 Masks

Made some tiny masks for art class, not an assignment but in order to kill time- we had to be there to dip our lost wax pieces but we had finished all our assignments except those still in the kiln, and also there was no guarantee that we would get to use the kiln this term, because the pieces need to be bone dry to go in which takes a few days, and the kiln was to be loaded the next day. So, we made very small pieces. I had nothing kicking around in my brain, no half concept to flesh out into a little creation, so I very boringly made little faces with slight variations that I reasoned I could paint vibrantly when I was feeling more creative. Today was a day for finishing pieces, and I used my little pieces to test how successful different techniques for applying acrylic paint to bisqueware are. It turns out that if you shellac it first with a spray varnish the clay will not absorb water from the paint and make it blotchy. (I thought we were supposed to shellac after painting). So, I made 5 lopsided little faces. 2 were bad enough to toss (I thought a seahorse nose and a single tentacle for hair would look playfully oceanic but it didn't work) and I don't like the orange one very much but I think three of something has a lot less pressure on each component than 2 does. The antlers are made of twigs that I hotglued into holes. The moon is iridescent.

Sculpture 1 lost wax sculpture

Okay. In a six week summer course we have done coil building, slab building, bas relief, plaster molds, 3-d plaster molds (I didn't do one of those), free sculpture, and now lost wax bronze casting. It is so many hours, I barely do other art. The quick pace meant that we had only a morning to do our wax sculptures that we are going to cast. Everyone liked mine. I like mine a lot. I had Carly Simon stuck in my head* the whole time I worked on it.
Hard to tell the scale, isn't it? It's perhaps 7" tall.


I used to make little polymer clay marionettes and sculptures, so this was not the first figure I've sculpted, but in this course I have not done one because I don't know the fundamentals of proportion so I would just disgrace myself in front of the intermediate and advanced students. So, for this, I carefully overemphasized and exaggerated proportions. Then, because wax dips remove material when you leave it in for a while and add it when you dip quickly and let in cool, the original proportions got all changed, and now it looks quite like my proportions if my legs were thinner or farther apart. A classmate asked, "Who is that? Just some random person?" well, yeah, actually. I like my body, I realized today while trying to justify my choice, the way people like their country or their dog. It's nothing special, but it's theirs, so they get attached. Everyone else made very simple sculptures: a star, a mushroom, an acorn, a leaf. And they are kind of nice, but idk, bronze! It is a metal! I felt pressured to come up with something more personally meaningful because metal is so permanent.


This is what it looks like dipped in acid, fine sand, acid, fine sand, acid, and coarse sand.
*Oh dear. I just youtubed this to make sure it was what I was thinking about, and hey, only part of the chorus is about me, the rest is some bs about like clouds.

Sculpture 1: Lost Wax Casting

Bronze casting is quite fun, so far, and a little tricky. Basically you make a wax sculpture, make vents and such from wax, coat it in acidic something and sand, melt out the wax and kiln fire the shell hard, then melt bronze in a crucible and pour it into your mold. It is pretty much the easiest metal mold process ever, but it is still a bit tricky on your first go, even with an instructor and everything in the studio set up really well.

First you ladle out a bit of wax onto the shallow basin of water.
This basin is made from plaster.


Then when it has cooled but not entirely, you pull it out and dry it off, then mold it. We were permitted to use hot water, soldering guns, and I used also dipping it in the wax even though that wasn't suggested. Basically I have played with wax and bees wax and paraffin a number of times, but never such sticky wax or with so many tools.
This is the other form of the wax, which is used for gates, vents, and sprues (I do not know the difference really) as well as for internal armatures. My first go didn't have an armature and the wax had some water in it and was basically just a mess, but on the second try it worked a bit better.
Then you sketch your project on a tracking sheet. This lets the instructor map out where you need vents for the air to escape in order for the bronze to fill the item properly. We also use the sheet to track how the ceramic shell is coming along, since that step happens over several days.

So this is the vat of acid. You have to wear gloves and turn off the mixer and then you dip your item and its whole mold casing thing.

Then you roll your item in fine sand (for the first 2-3 coats of the shell- after that you use coarser sand for strength.). Actually rolling did not work for mine because the vent joins were very small and thus the connection points were thin and weak. So after I resoldered those I just sprinkled with the sand.
Here are some sculptures drying after being dipped and rolled. Mine is on the right. The other ones visible are multiple sculptures sharing one gate because they are quite small and it saves time and bronze.

Sculpture 1: Sea Creature Amalgam

I have finished the clay work for my sea creature amalgam. Tomorrow we are having a presentation about glazes, so that will be fun.
Here are all of the glazes shown on little cups. The top two rows are oxidisation fired, and the bottom two are reduction fired. The reduction firing makes a less perfect finish. I don't know which version I will do. I am not very excited by any of these colors. I am interested in raku firing, but apparently it is too dangerous for an elaborate piece, because of the quenching or something. Anyway, I don't think any of those are right. I don't know what I want it to look like. I planned to do it all black but everyone says that I should highlight the details more than that.
I don't know. I think red would be excellent, but the school reds are so brown, I would want a bright red. So I am leaning toward glazing in black with green accents, such as the suckers.
I spent 3 hours today digging out and refining all of those little rectangles. This is a good view of the crab climbing out of it.

I was going to wuss out and not do suckers on the tentacles because it seemed overwhelming, but then I was inspecting the tentacles to see how many suckers I would need and only a few places had the suckered side in view so I only had to do about 12 suckers. And weirdly, they suctioned onto the tool I was sticking them on with.

We are all done with wet clay (THANK GOD) because there are only 2 weeks left in the course. I still have to glaze everything and then we are making a lost wax bronze piece. I am kind of exited but there are so many possibilities that I don't know what to do.

Update: I used slip to paint the claws and crab legs black and the inlay on the body yellow, and the suckers pink. This way, if it comes out badly i can glaze over the whole thing in black.

Sculpture 1: student choice

This is what I made on Thursday. I envisioned it being this great celestial/global/starmap/genesis model of creation/lunar/orrery thing, but for some mysterious reason it didn't pan out. The spheres kept sagging from the weight of the clay and after a while I began to suspect I was subconsciously copying my friend's sculpture, which was of a very large peapod.
So I brainstormed this weekend and decided to layer a lot of ocean dweller features onto it, until it was freaking amazing and opulent and creepy. So far everyone has unanimously described it as "cute".

The second I test-fit it on the tentacles I was in love.
Nearly 6 hours of work later, I have this.

I think all of the features are complete but I still have to do textures. I am doing a seahorse based organic but angular windowpane texture on the large globe. So far I have 5 of 30 panels completed. Oooooh noooo it is going to take so long. The divisions are based on where the tentacles lie, but the three evenly spaced lobster claws don't match up and I am just going to have to ignore that. The weird unattached fish item was going to be poking out of the hole but now I think a smaller tentacled item might be best. I have not picked a texture or anything for the small bowl thing at the top.

(Again, not my art, it is from etsy and I did not write down the artist, ugh) I thought some sort of things like this, little feelers or something, but that means I will have to individually attach like 50 little feelers. Oh, wait, I can put its hippo eye in its top of head bowl. Ok.

Sculpture 1: Tiny House

Our second assignment this semester was to make a little model of our houses.
Here is mine. It is awaiting firing. It is a model of Willow House based on the sketch of our house that I like drawing. It is going to be a tealight holder, which will look very cozy I think. "Are you making a haunted house?" asked one of my friends in the class. Ahem.


This is not my work. It is to show how huge everyone made their houses, which made mine look really tiny- it has a footprint that is probably 8x4.

Sculpture 1: Apple

Here is my first art assignment of the semester. It is an apple.

Now, embarrassingly, I did not sign my apple and do not know which one it is. I think it is the one on the left, because the detailing on the bottom matches what I remember doing. However, I did not realize I was making such a straight sided apple. It was an assignment to get us used to having our hands in clay, so I am not sad that mine is lost, it is just careless of me.