Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Seahorse Sculpture


(better pics soon to come)

I've been obsessed with seahorses for a while now and it's all starting to come together. This is my very first sculpture. So far I've only done jewelry so this is the biggest thing I've ever made, and its still pretty small. It stands a bit over a foot in height.



It took quite a while to get all the pieces together for this project and get it all just right. The seahorses are cast in bronze. A real seahorse was used to make a mold that was then used to make waxes and eventually cast. The leaves are made out of copper. The copper was put through a rolling mill to get the lined texture, and then twisted. The seahorses were soldered to the copper.

I've been doing lapidary (stone cutting-grinding) for about a year now. This is why I chose to use a stone for the base. It was a very rough piece at first but eventually i got it all shaped and polished pretty well. It's black obsidian with some grey and white stripes. Took about 8 hours and my back got a real work out!

I used a cupric nitrate patina on the leaves, and ferric and pot ash on the sea horses.

I wanted to keep the sculpture as true to life as possible so I researched what type of plants seahorses live around and how they interact with them. I just wanted to capture the natural beauty of the seahorses and their surroundings.

So, I hope you enjoy it. Comments would be appreciated! Thanks.

2 comments:

Darlene Martin said...

Congratulations on your first sculpture. It is beautiful.

amy said...

i don't know anyone who makes stuff like that. really awesome!