What You Need to Bring to Class Next Week

Next week we will begin molding and casting.  You will put away the Styrofoam and will need to have a new set of materials.  Come to class on Tuesday (February 2) with the following:

CLEAR silicone sealant (2 or 3 tubes)

A calking gun (or you can use the ones we have in the room)

A bottle of dish detergent (get one with a scent you like and without a lot of additives)

Small items you would like to mold and make cast copies of (3 or 4 items/from which we will choose the 2)

On a side note: The carving sets have arrived at the bookstore.  Purchase yours as soon as you can.  It will be quite a while before we use it for carving wood, but they come in handy now and then with what we'll be doing over the next few weeks, as well.

Video Tutorials for Carving Foam

Here are a couple of videos I've happened upon that give some tips for carving foam.  In the first one, the sculptor is using the technique we went over in class yesterday, only using a band saw to cut around the template shapes he drew:

In the next video, the sculptor is working on a very thin slab of foam, so he is demonstrating how to carve in relief.  This kind of carving can get you the surface details you want on your sculpture.  In your case, however, I want you to work in a purely subtractive method, whereas this sculptor adds pieces onto his piece:

Examples of Styrofoam Carving By Past Students

Styrofoam carving due Thursday, January 28.

Sculpture Terms

• Sculpture – the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions.
• Plastic Arts – art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by molding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics.
• Relief Sculpture – from the Latin verb relevo, to raise, a sculpture technique which creates the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above a flat background plane.
• Sculpture in the Round – a type of sculpture which is presented in complete three-dimensional form and are not attached to a flat background (unlike relief).
• Subtractive Sculpture – sculpture techniques that involve removing material to create a finished work, such as wood carving or stone sculpture.
• Additive Sculpture – the process of creating sculpture by adding material to create the work, such as molding and modeling.
• Carving - a subtractive process that involves removing unwanted portions of the raw materials to reveal the form that the artist has visualized.
• Modeling - an additive process of building the forms by using highly plastic materials such as clay or wax.
• Casting - a complex additive process wherein a negative mold is created.
• Bas or low relief - the quality of a projecting image where the overall depth is shallow.  The background is very compressed or completely flat, as on most coins, on which all images are in low-relief.
• Sculpture in the Round - sculpture that can be seen from more than one position.

Course Syllabus

Click below for the full text of the course syllabus: