Wax SCULPTURE – 4 weeks

About this course

Come and find out about a beautifully responsive and direct technique enabling you to make a small scale figurative sculpture.

Introduction
Our goal in this course is to develop your skill, confidence and fluency as a sculptor. We will be using microcrystalline brown wax, a carving and modeling wax, which with a little heat, becomes soft and malleable in the hand. As it cools it will harden sufficiently to provide a finished piece for you to keep.

Choosing a subject
The choice of subject is not key to this project. Don’t be self conscious about what is or is not art.

Wax modeling is well suited to making organic forms, figurative in the broadest sense. We will talk a little about the various types of wax and their uses. The brown wax we will use is often used by artists to make for maquettes for work to be cast in bronze as it it helps the artist visualize the finished product.

Prepare for the course by making sketches, collecting printed images or objects which will be a source of reference for your sculpture. We will have a look at some images of sculpture by artists like Elizabeth Frink and Rodin as inspiration for their expressive mark making .

Process
Your sculpting process will begin with making an armature, in other words, a simple soft wire frame bent to form a kind of skeleton on which you build your wax. Next, melt some wax in a small pan over a gentle heat or with a gas torch. Remove the source of heat and, as the liquid wax begins to set, scoop a spoonful and begin to work it between your fingers, this is your sculpting medium. Build your shapes with small soft pellets of wax so that you can easily control its’ workability.

As the wax hardens you can work on it with metal modeling and carving tools gently heated with a flame.

You can also work directly with a flame on your sculpture, melting parts of the surface to make contrasting textures of glassy smoothness.

Further development
With care your finished wax sculpture will last for many years. Wax has been used for centuries to create maquettes, ie. three dimensional sketches to develop larger works. It also lends itself to being cast into a variety of more permanent materials from plaster and resins to bronze or even precious metals. Building on the foundations from this short course we can explore some of these techniques in our next course

All materials and tools for the course will be supplied. Please bring any tools you might have or think might be suitable.