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The design of the sculpture began with a pencil drawing! Penguins! Then, according to the drawing, I made a rough pencil silhouette of the penguin on a styrofoam block. The purpose was to make a model of the sculpture that I had in mind. This styrofoam model would be used later for bronze casting.
Styrofoam models
Styrofoam models
The penguins were first crafted crudely with a hot wire and then refined with a sharp cutter. This is the most enjoyable part of the art, and it's absolutely an experience of the most free and unrestricted use of your imagination. As my penguins have symbolic gender, I have crafted their bodies differently to permit a visual distinction of the yin and the yang.
Casting
Casting
The styrofoam models were then used to make production molds, from which wax copies were made and sprued to make way for casting material to flow in. The sprued wax copies were then molded with silica to make sand stuccos. The artworks then became negative spaces surrounded by hard ceramic shell, with the wax melted and removed. Then, melted metal (bronze for my sculptures) was poured into the shell, and allowed to cool. Finally, the shells were hammered off and removed, and the bronze penguins were created.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost-wax_casting for the casting process.
November 2012
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