Sculpture & 3D Form

This workbook turns the course into studio practice. Each section pairs hands-on building, carving, and casting exercises with planning worksheets and check-off lists so you move deliberately from a wire armature to a finished, documented sculpture. Use the templates to plan a piece, log a plaster mix that works, and record each finished work — the habits that turn a one-off experiment into a repeatable practice. Work safely throughout: a fitted respirator and wet cleaning are not optional around clay, plaster, and stone dust.

Train the sculptural eye, choose process and material for an idea, and set up a safe workspace.

Pick three small objects (a pebble, your own fist, a toy figure). Rotate each slowly for several minutes under a single side light. Out loud or on paper, name the big masses, track how the silhouette changes, and find where planes turn from light into shadow. Then sketch one object's silhouette from four different angles.

Take one sculpture idea and decide, deliberately, how to make it. Fill this in before touching any material.

List what you own and what you still need before starting, with a rough cost for each gap, and confirm your safety setup.

Build a stable skeleton, model the figure big-to-small, and draw gesture in space with wire.

Bend an aluminium-wire armature to a simple figure or animal gesture and anchor it to a wood base. Pose it to the line of action FIRST, before any clay. Bulk thick areas with foil. Then hang or cantilever a limb and leave it overnight with a little clay on it.

Model a small head or figure over your armature following the sequence: primary masses, then planes, then secondary forms, then surface last. Turn the piece every fifteen minutes and judge from arm's length. Resist finishing any one feature early.

Using one or two gauges of aluminium wire, build a figure in motion (running, leaping, reaching) as line in space. Start from a single gesture line, add limbs with tight joins, and use coils to suggest volume. Aim for the fewest lines that still read.

Carve soft material rough-to-fine, capture a form in a mould, and cast a clean plaster positive.

Cast a small plaster brick (or get a soapstone offcut). Draw your design on every face, mark the highest points, then carve rough-to-fine: coarse rasp for bulk, finer rasps/rifflers to refine, abrasives to finish. Stay outside your lines and take less with each pass. Carve wet and masked.

Plan a mould of one small original before you mix anything. Resolve the parting line and the release first.

Prepare a clean, released, clamped mould BEFORE mixing. Add plaster to water (not the reverse), sift until an island sits proud, slake briefly, mix without whipping air, then pour or slush-cast. Tap out bubbles, let it fully set and cool, demould gently, and fettle the seam.

Resolve every viewpoint, finish the surface convincingly, then mount, photograph, and document the piece.

Put a finished or near-finished piece on a turntable and rotate it slowly. At each main angle, judge it against the five principles: line of action, contrapposto, negative space, balance/asymmetry, rhythm. Mark any 'dead' angle and adjust until at least three or four views work.

Finish one piece for its material: seal and faux-patina a plaster cast (dark base, dry-brush highs, glaze the recesses, seal and wax), or sand stone through grits, or finish wire/assemblage with a protective coat. Follow the rule: dark in the hollows, light on the raised planes.

Plan how the finished piece meets the world and how you will photograph it before it leaves the studio.