The Application of Gold Gilding in Sculpture
Gold is featured by its unique luster. For those sculptures which need golden flashy finish, it’s a good solution to use gold gilding. The gold gilt sculptures not only look great, but also can keep its luster for quite a long time because the chemical property of gold allows it to counteract oxidation. Gilt sculpture is also suitable for public art because it get along well with all kinds of weather conditions: rain, sunlight, wind, fox, etc. We gilt a group of athletics sculptures 10 years ago and they look just like brand new now. Please view the pictures below. The basic steps of gold gilding technique includes the following steps: Prepare for gold leaf; Apply base coating; Attach gold leaf onto sculpture surface; Make necessary refinement with brush; Apply a layer of transparent protective coating onto the gold finish. It requires practice to master the skill of gilding. Below is some of our past projects of gilding. I look forward to your comments and feel free to let me know if you have any technical question. ...
Read MoreTips on Making Great Wax Mould for Bronze Casting (2)
This article explores how to make wax mould with irritation approach and demonstrate a case study using this technique. Below is a case of using irritation technique to make wax mould. Irritation approach is suitable for producing small scale sculpture with height around 20 inches. Step 1: pour molten wax into silicone mold, which is usually with a plaster jacket. Spin and shake the silicone mould slowly and steadily to make the molten wax flow freely onto all silicone mould surface. Step2: place the silicone mould still for while and wait wax to cool a little bit and irritate the liquid wax. The wax left in the silicone mould will solidify and form the wax mould. The thickness of current wax mould is very thin so you will repeat the process described above a couple of times to get the desired thickness. To make the thickness of wax mould consistent, it’s important to spin and shake the silicon mould a little bit so liquid wax can capture every details of the sculpture. Step 3: take off the wax mould from the silicone mould carefully to avoid any damage on wax occurring. Exam carefully the wax mould to check if there is any imperfection on the surface. Using a brush pen to dip molten wax onto those places where wax layer is very thin. The pro of the irritation approach is the partition line is not clear and easy to remove. Please let me know if you have any question or any comments by clicking here...
Read MoreIntroduction and Comparison of Bronze Casting
It’s helpful for sculptors to understand some commonly used bronze casting techniques. This can help artists to take technical factors into consideration when they are creating sculptures. I have seen some well sculpted work looks not so good because choosing a wrong technical approach. I plan to write a series articles on this topic . This series well be composed of several parts: a brief introduction on different casting techniques, their pros and cons, their suitable application and best practice, economical consideration on choosing one of them and some case study. I will try to make myself clear and easy to understand. Your comments would be the biggest support for me....
Read MoreTips on Making Great Wax Mould for Bronze Casting (1)
Lost wax technique is a suitable way for casting bronze sculpture which has complex structure and delicate texture. One of the benefit of lost wax technique is it provides sculptor an opportunity to refine or improve the wax work before bronze casting. The key factor of a successful bronze casting using this technique is to make excellent wax mould. The quality of wax mould affects the quality of bronze casting directly and there are two things to consider for making good wax mould. (1) Ways of forming wax mould (2) Using proper type of wax. Generally speaking, there are three basic approach of making wax mould. Compressing: put wax block into a compressing mold make from metal, rubber or plaster and just compress it to generate the desired shape. This is a quick way to make multiple copies of wax mould. Wax mould made in this way is usually of high quality, showing clear outline and details. Irrigation. It’s hard to use compressing way to form some shape such as human bust. There where irrigation way stands. Pour molten wax into a negative mould (usually silicone ) and keep it cool for a while until the wax wall forms and then let go the molten wax. By this, we can get a wax mould without seam. This technique is relatively hard to operate because you must be very sensitive to wax temperature. Brushing. For those sculpture with simple shape, brushing is a good way. It’s simple to operate. Use a brush to dip into molten wax and brush onto a negative mould to form positive wax mould. Make sure brushing all over around and the thickness of wax mould consistent. We will talk about the details about tips on making good wax moulds in the next few articles. (Owen...
Read MoreCase Study of Lost Wax Casting for Bronze Sculpture
Lost wax technique is one of the most used methods to cast metal sculpture. It has a very long history. This technique can be defined as a process by which a metal (such as silver, gold, brass or bronze) sculpture is cast from an artist’s sculpture as a wax mould. Here is a case of a sculptures made from lost wax technique in ancient China to show how far lost wax technique can go. This piece is called Zeng Houyi Bowl for holding liquor. The original piece was made around 500 B.C. It was owned by a local king of Ancient China. The most visible character of this piece is its extremely complicated patterns. These are 102 dragons pattern on this 16.5 inch tall works. Considering the time (500 B.C), it’s very unbelievable our ancestors were capable to use lost wax so well. The picture shown is our replica and to be honest, our works is still not as intricate as the original piece. No matter how complicated the sculpture is, there are two basic methods to make wax mould. Direct way: sculptor carves on a wax block directly to make the desired shape. This is a onetime mould because it can only be used once. Indirect way: the wax mold is made from a negative silicone rubber mold which is made from a sculptor’s original piece (clay, plaster, resin etc) The quality of wax work affects the final bronze directly so a wax mold needs a little bit refining after coming out. The thickness of the bronze is controlled by the thickness of wax work so it’s important to keep wax thickness consistent. Inconsistency of wax work may lead to fault or imperfection on the casting duo to the different shrinkage rate of different parts. Though rarely used in large scale sculpture, lost wax is warmly welcome because it’s very suitable for small and intricate piece such as life size figure, bust, etc. The wax used for making the mold varies and I plan to write another post on this topic. Below is a simple demonstration on how a resin master pattern become into a bronze bust. I’ll write a series articles about how to apply lost wax technique to create wonderful bronze sculptures and please let me know if you have any question. Any comment is highly appreciated. ( by Owen...
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