How to Construct Plaster Sculptures

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Debbie the roboteer and I'm here for Expert Village talking about sculpture and I want my assistant Marty to help explain to you how I created this sculpture from structural foam and casting plaster because this is not a marble sculpture, it is actually what we would call construct, so I constructed it. All right, thank you Deb. The way that this was put together was with Styrofoam and Green Tag casting plaster. You can get Green Tag casting plaster at construction supply places for about seventeen dollars for about one hundred pounds so it is not expensive. You start off with an idea of what you need to build. For example here, Deb started off with the legs and the bottom and she took a piece of plywood and took chunks of Styrofoam that were the inside shape of the legs and the butt and kind of glouped them up with the plaster which had the consistency of like pancake batter and then stuck it in place and let it sit and then added another piece and glouped more of the plaster over the outside and then took files and rasps to remove the excess and then added more and then more plaster, more Styrofoam and then more plaster in many, many layers. And she started with the legs and bottom and then built the back and the head and she worked on these details and got much of this done before adding the mutate, the rock itself and then after that was done with it's basket started, then it became time to add the arms, which were just pieces of Styrofoam again that were buttered up with the plaster. So then you just take your tools, your files and knives and chisels and cut off the excess plaster that isn't part of your sculpture."