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What is the ideal wax to use for sculpting?
Hi, I am interested in making a tromp l'oeil effect of oil paint at a large scale (as free standing sculpture). I wonder if anyone can recommend a sculpting wax that can be colored (either with pigment, or whatever) and manipulated as easily as possible to create an almost cake frosting-like effect.
It's important to me that the sculpture be made from the manipulation of the materials, rather than by being formed in a mold. A certain amount of armature is expected, but ultimately I would like that aspect to be downplayed.
Thanks for your input!
2 Answers
- ?Lv 78 years agoFavorite Answer
There is a wax that is used for impasto that obviously takes pigment, but will probably not function on a large scale. Most of the waxes used for sculpting are actually worked on a small scale and are intensely colored to indicate hardness and melting temperature - actual large sculptures are done in non-hardening modeling clay with molds pulled from them.
I think you will find that you have to look into doing additive sculpting with plaster - building up a base (perhaps by casting, or not), then wetting that down and adding plaster to do a certain level of detail work, and then doing the wax detail you want with impasto wax you have colored. The added detail work plaster can also be colored so you are not working on a pure white background.
Working wax on plaster is not terribly common but it has been done before - often with beeswax for a yellow fleshtone effect. http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/search-result...
Of course, since you haven't seen a bunch of what you want to do you know you are treading new ground. You may have to query museum curators and university professors for suggestions.
And being perhaps picky "tromp l'oeil effect of oil paint" what you want to do is exactly the opposite (unless I have misread your request) from "tromp l'oeil" which is laying down perfectly flat painting that looks 3 dimensional it is so real. You seem to want to do large oil brush/knife stroke effects.