The Art of Sculpture: Techniques and Forms Explored

1. Sculpture Vocabulary

2. The 4 ways to create sculpture • Additive • Subtractive • Modeling • Casting

3. Sculptors Draw… • Before creating sculptures many sketches from multiple viewpoints must be created. • Even though the final product is 3D the sculptor must be proficient in drawing and painting.

4. Gesture: • Gestural lines indicate action and physical movement. • Our eyes follow the active lines as they swirl across the page • In this example wire creates the gesture

5. Gesture drawing: • Moving a drawing medium quickly and freely over a surface to capture the form and actions of a subject

6. Relief and in the round • Relief sculpture refers to the only type of sculpture that is not viewed from all sides. • Sculpture that is “in the round” is viewed by all sides • Both types of sculpture can be created in the four traditional ways.

7. Relief Sculpture: • a type of sculpture that has forms that extend into space from a single plane.

8. Some relief sculptures tell a story

9. Armature: • internal support, often used to supply strength, or to provide weight reductions by providing volume and mass, which saves on outer material such as plaster

10. Additive: • Additive sculpture is a process in which pieces of material are glued or joined together. As in modeling, assembled sculptures are built up. • A house of cards, for example, is made by assembling. • Additive sculpture is also known as “constructing” and assemblage.

11. Louise Nevelson • Used assemblage to make her sculptures • Is this a relief sculpture?

12. Casting: • is a process, where the sculptor starts by making a mold.

13. Mold for Serpent downtown San Jose

14. Mold Cast Paper Cast Sculpture

15. Carving: • Carving is a subtractive process. Michelangelo used the subtractive process of carving marble

16. Here are some more examples of carving

17. Modeling: • is the building up and shaping of soft material to create a sculpture. Oil based clay model Bronze from clay model

18. There are two basic shapes or forms • Organic • Geometric

19. Organic: • of, relating to, or derived from living organisms. • organic objects are more flowing, usually modeled with only the fingers of the artist.

20. Geometric: • of or relating to art based on simple geometric shapes (as straight lines, circles, or squares). • Geometric objects often require the use of tools to produce a more sharp, hard-edged image.

21. Realism: • fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization. • Also known as Imitationalism

22. Realism Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Fredrick Hart Odessa by Fredrick Hart

23. Abstraction: • a brief definition of creating an abstract artwork is to secure the essence of the subject matter and translate it into personal expression.

24. Horse by Deborah Butterffield Look closely at the colors, lines, and angles of the horse. What did the artist do to make her horse beautiful? Which details did she emphasize? Which did she eliminate?

25. Non-objective: • representing or intended to represent no natural or actual object, figure, or scene

26. Untitled by Donald Judd, 1967 • Untitled is an example of the artist’s spare and elegant use of materials. Each stainless steel and Plexiglas unit carries equal weight with no compositional hierarchy in which the parts have different roles and degrees of emphasis. • There is no story to be applied to this piece, it is to be seen and appreciated for what it is a repeated pattern of strong beautifully fabricated forms. • The power of visual language when seen in its purest form, holds as much interest as works in which the artist reveals self, or tells a story.

27. Maquette: • are rough ideas and not finished within themselves. It is a small sketch, model, or study for a larger sculpture

28. Medium: • the materials we use in sculpture such as clay, paper, wax, marble, stone, plaster, wire, metal and various other materials. The tools used to manipulate the materials are not considered a medium. Marble by Michelangelo Acrylic by Frederick Hart Oaxacan wood carving

29. Technique: • is the combination of physical ability and use of tools and materials. • It is the way an idea becomes reality. • The sculptor must have a knowledge of the media in order to know what tools to use and must know how to use the tools in order to work with the media

30. Form: • Form describesvolume and mass, or thethree-dimensional aspects of objects that take up space. • (shape is two-dimensional.) • the package in which the ideas are presented. It is the total design.

31. Architectural forms: • Enclose spaces and most are geometric, but some architects use curvilinear forms in their buildings.

32. Content: • tone, mood, essence, statement, feeling, emotion, beauty, reality and truth.

33. The 3 fundamentals of sculpture are: • form • content • technique

34. Review: 4 Ways to create a sculpture • Modeling, subtracting, casting, and assembling are the four ways to create a sculpture. Modeling Carving Casting Assembling