Sculpture Projects

Took intro to sculpture with Thomas Applegate at Cogswell last semester. Following are the two sculptures I completed as well as some of the processes used to create them.

Our first project was a chimera and it's human master. My design combined a kudu, giraffe and a hippopotamus to make a "Kudiraffamus". His master would be a spear fisherman.

This first stage was a rough maquette whose legs were way too short and pretty much just looked like a fat deer. As seen above.

I worked on a second maquette with longer legs. This one's proportions were much more to my liking. See him here next to my printer.

Next I drew armature maps: side view, front view and top view, then created the final armatures for the characters.

The hippo body was padded with styrofoam.

Clay was slathered to the surface. The interesting thing about this project was creating this top heavy animal, who would also have a rider, be put into a walking pose, and be sturdy and balanced. On the right you can see a bit of the hardware sticking out of the kudiraffamus's back. I epoxy'd a coupling bolt into the armature of the animal an some aluminum tubing into the pelvis of the rider. The tubing slipped over the coupling bolt and a screw could be tightened through the riders back to secure him to his steed. This made sculpting the individual characters easier

Here are the results.

  

Our Second project was a transformation.

To visualize our final sculpture, we took photos of armatures, then digitally painted masses over the images.

    

For this Project I made 3 identical armatures. I worked on these 2 fellows simultaneously. up through secondary form. I then used the 3rd armature to create the "sculpture" using candle wax (paraffin). Applying what I learned from the clay (plasteline) characters to the wax sculpt.

Working with the wax was interesting. I melted it down to liquid then as it solidified I applied it to the armature. Most of the armature was covered in styrofoam before I applied the wax. Using a serrated tool I scrapped out the rough shapes I wanted. Then with a wire loop I smoothed out the surface and finally polished it with a paper towel and some friction to get it to look a bit like stone.

Here's how the final sculpture came out.