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Ceramic Sculpture - How To Finesse A Piece
Ceramic Sculpture begins to take on an almost magical appeal when worked to a high finish. People literally gasp when they see a a finished sculpt and can't believe the piece has been created from a lump of clay. However, from my point of view, its more to do with hard work, solid techniques and dutiful application than any magical artistic creativity. Finishing, Smoothing and Finessing for Ceramic Sculpture The following insights may be useful to read through both for collectors and for developing sculptors (for other sculpting information, other pages on this site have lots of details -see The Clay Sculpture Tutorials and the various sculpting tips on how to manage clay. The basic sculpture technique pages offer a good starting point or the main how to sculpt index page at Clay Sculpting intro page). Working for the famous name ceramic brands it is important to have an impeccable finish. My work has a hundred eagle eyes at the factory all looking for the slightest imperfection (now that's what you call motivation!). When I do my bronze sculptures for the galleries I like to have a looser and more free interpretation for my ceramic sculptures. I am often asked how I get such a smooth finish on my figures. Here's my secrets revealed. There are three stages to a perfect finish. * 1. Sponging * 2. Brushing * 3. Finishing brushing 1. Sponging Remove tool marks and unevenness with a sponge and a nice big bowl of warm water (the warm water is for your sake, not the piece). Wring out the sponge often to remove excess clay and squeeze out excess water well, otherwise you will over wet your work. Obviously, you can't do the small areas this way. Be careful not to remove any of your hard won detailing! 2. Brushing Using the medium stiffness brush, carefully smooth the areas that your sponge couldn't reach. Again please do not touch the areas of detail. The areas of detail are smoothed and finished with the 'forged steel mixed use tool'. 3. Finishing Brushing Using the large and small specialist finishing brushes, now go over the piece and remove all brush marks to a smooth glossy finish. Sprigging or Sprig Moulding The detail shown on Celtic Tableau (click the highlighted link to go to a large picture) is done by a very traditional English method called 'sprig moulding'. Separately, you sculpt a detail that you want to reproduce time and again. When it's finished you pour over some plaster of paris to take a mold of the detail. Once the plaster has dried out you can remove the original and now you have a press mold for your detail. Press in clay, then carefully remove your detail and apply to sculpt. For more information see also The Clay Sculpture Tutorials and the various sculpting tips on how to manage clay . The basic sculpture technique pages offer a good starting point. Alternatively, go back to the Homepage.
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