How to do a Plaster Sculpture

I do sculpture as well as paint...From clay to bronze but my favourite medium is plaster...This is how to make your own plaster sculpture...Warning right off the bat, it is not easy so try to have some ideas before going into it!

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Large bag of "Construction Worker" plaster
• Mixing Bowl
• Pieces of cut up burlap
• Sketch Book filled with ideas for shapes
• Chicken Wire
• Wire Cutters

1. To begin, refer to your sketches and shapes you want to sculpt....
   Come up with a plan and then take your chicken wire and start using the wire cutters on the chicken wire cutting it in the outline of a shape...

2. Sculpt the chicken wire into a shape and attatching the cut wires at the ends....now that you have a shape it is time to apply plaster and sculpt....

3. Take Pieces of Burlap (heavy duty fabric may work too) and make a mixture into the mixing bowl of a full bowl of water and keep adding handfulls of plaster to the water...do this by lightly sprinkling it to the water thoroghly...

4. Once you stir the plaster around and around make sure you get a mildly thick cream like sauce, dip pieces of burlap into it...make sure you coat the entire piece of that burlap...

5. Next, you apply the pieces of plaster & burlap onto the shape you carved in chicken wire...keep doing this over & over with plaster until you cover the entire shape. Sculpt the piece with ideas and detail to create a sculpture...

6. Let the plaster dry for several hours and that's it! you created a plaster sculpture!

Tips & Warnings

• A tip I'd like to teach you is how to make plaster flowers to add to your sculpture...my favourite is roses...It's good to do this shape with fabric and you may want to do a light coat of plaster so the colour of the fabric is shown thru lightly. But to make a flower is to take a long skinny piece of fabric, dip it into the plaster and move it around & around in your hands and bunch up the sculpture shape into a rose formation and then stick it onto the sculpture!
• Warning: your hands will be thoroughly coated in plaster so be by a sink to wash your hands clean...

[alittlesteph]

on 1/12/2009 !! Plaster hardens in drains. Instead, mix the plaster in a small plastic bucket (like ice cream buckets) and then let the excess dry and just knock out the excess and throw away in the trash. :)