My class, Sculpture 1, lasts a whole semester and encompasses 4 projects plus a journal. The first project I’ve been working on is making moulds and replicating small sculptures of my own. You can see the first part of this project here.

I’m adoring this class. I haven’t done any sculpture in years and I haven’t thought of myself as a sculptor, but this class is opening my mind to so many possibilities for smaller works made from affordable materials. It’s making me very happy, I will definitely be majoring in this subject through my studies.

Having made my tests and prototypes, the next step was to sculpt my final clay works, so here they are. Four beautiful waves and one little boat with goods and a tiny person wrapped in a hood and holding onto the boat.

While the clay is still wet, I’ve covered it with silicon to create five moulds:I’ve then created interlocking two part plaster shells for 4 of the moulds. The 5th mould is the small pair of waves and doesn’t need an outer shell. This part was nerve wracking because I wasn’t certain I was going to be able to separate the plaster shells into their two parts without destroying anything!The first plaster mould is a success! Perfect little waves duplicated:The two part shells worked perfectly. At last I can cut the clay originals out of the mould:Waiting until now to cut the silicon is very important. In my first trials I cut the silicon before creating the plaster shell. This meant that the plaster shell forced its way into the split silicon, and all future casts made with that mould would have a large fin of extra plaster that had pooled in the split area. In this case the plaster shell does the opposite, it forces the cut edges of the silicon mould together so that the cast is almost perfect.

The first big pour. Here are the moulds, turned upside down and rested on clay rings. They are bound together with split bicycle tubing which is slightly flexible but very strong and perfect for the task. And here they are at last: the first set of plaster casts. Gorgeous!And then there were more:I will keep pouring more for a few weeks until I have sufficient to create a miniature stormy ocean about 1.5 m square. Finishing the works is the next challenge. The plaster responds really well to being sanded:And then trialling a few different styles of painting them:

I particularly like how these black and green ones have turned out…