Air Drying Clay

There is nothing more disappointing and frustrating than having ruined and broken many of the clay sculptures I have tried to create. I sought out the advice of my B-tech peers a few weeks ago and they advised me to use a polymer clay called Fimo. They recommended I use Fimo as the completed sculpture will need to be placed into an oven or microwave for a few minutes to become hard as opposed to clay which needs to be fired in a kiln. Feeling encouraged and optimistic again I headed off to Waltons in search of Fimo, unfortunately they did not stock that product, I was advised to try an air drying modelling clay which is very similar to Fimo apart from the obvious difference with it being air dried rather than heat dried. I haven't tried it just yet. Fingers crossed.

Playing with clay

 

Kamel Potteries

 

Today I finally made my way down to Kamel potteries in Springfield park. I queried about the type of clay I should use to create my sculptures and I was told to use 'Super white' clay as it was one of the strongest clays that she stocked as well as it allowing me to be able to add colour onto my sculptures. I was also told to just experiment and have some fun and I would eventually get the hang of working with clay. 

Sculpting my future

My research has brought me a step closer to finding out how to proceed with manufacturing my sculptures. The three methods which I discovered were “add on sculpture”, “reduction sculpture” and “bronze sculpture”. The “add on sculpture” method requires one to create a base / platform and then add support structures.  The form is then simply filled with a variation of mixed materials such as newspaper, tin, foil, aluminium etc.  The “reduction sculpture” method requires one to create the basic form of their sculpture in wax or clay and then carve out detail into the sculpture. 

Lastly, the “bronze sculpture” method requires the full process of the “reduction sculpture” method to be completed, prior to making a mould out of the sculpture.  From thereon, the process is the same as the jewellery lost wax casting process.

In my opinion, the “bronze sculpture” method will prove to be a long and costly process.  The two sculptures I plan on working with are the “reduction sculpture” and the “add on sculpture”.  Below are some of the hyperlinks in which these simplified processes are demonstrated.  

http://www.gobronze.org/from.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Sculpture

K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid

After Pinning multiple images on Pintrest,  I am of the opinion that I should start experimenting and designing to create my sculptures that will be used as a reference for creating my jewellery. For now, I prefer to keep the designs of my sculptures as minimalistic as possible as I still need to be able to experiment with various materials such as clay, metal, wood etc.

 

Image can be seen on this website :

 

Next step is finding the best way in manufacturing the sculpture

My Interest on Pintrest

 

After conversing with my peers, I was encouraged to use Pintrest as a starting point of finding the initial image of reference, which I would then be able to deduce interesting design elements and use them to create a sculpture which will be the reference for creating my jewellery collection.

Metamorphic reference

I am addressing my referencing issue towards the creation of my jewellery. For example, instead of using a random image of a sculpture from the web, which I did previously, I would like to use those images as an inspiration to create a sculpture from which I can extrapolate jewellery pieces.