Art and Design A comprehensive guide for creative artists - Aaltodoc

d. Voids are seen as open spaces that connect one area
from a positive continuous part of a sculpture. Peck
(2007, 19) notes, “... negative forms are created by the
empty spaces or voids between the masses.” Voids are
used for enhancing a sculpture design, managing the
weight and in some situations using voids accounts for
the increased prevalence of balance.
e. Rhythm and movement; “ ... just as you feel rhythm
in music and dance, often to the point of moving your
body to its engaging patterns, so will you feel rhythm
in the emerging sculptural forms of your imagination.”
(Peck 2007, 16) Clearly, then, rhythm and movement can
be useful in sculpture for they are closely connected in
the matter of character, form and function.
As you continue working, you will discover very many other
important elements and principles of sculptural design.
For the meantime, let us try to look at the different ways in
which a sculpture artwork can be executed.
Methods of sculpture
The various kinds of sculpture artworks that we see are
in most cases executed in two ways; direct and indirect.
“Whether carving is direct or indirect it makes no difference.
It is the finished object that counts.” (Curtis 1999, 98)
Here is how both methods can be used to produce a
sculpture artwork:
1. Direct (taille direct) is a procedure explained by Rich
(1988, 265) with a poem from Michelangelo; “... the
sculptor never invents anything that does not lie
concealed and resting within the block of marble and
that no hand that is not animated by the spirit will
extract from the block what lies concealed within ...”
Undoubtedly, this is a subtraction method of working.
Because of that, the direct method of producing
sculpture artworks occurs by ways of cutting off
unwanted layers outside from a material to obtain a
shape (artwork), which represents the sketch.
2. Indirect carving uses a small model known as a
maquette. Thus, the sculptor copies the proportions of
a small scale model to shape a sculpture artwork. Rich
(1988, 262) asserts, “Indirect is physically economical for
the sculptor.”
Nonetheless, nearly all indirect sculptural artworks can
easily be executed from materials such as clay, cement,
soap and wax.
Types of sculpture
Sculpture can be made in different ways such as relief,
inverse/intaglio and high relief. In spite of that, relief
sculpture is meant to be viewed from only its front position
and sculpture in the round stands in open space, where it can
be viewed from nearly all directions.
Others are environments and kinetics. All these classified
groups are important and they are highly regarded by
nearly all practicing sculptors.
Here is a brief analysis of each one of them:
1. Relief sculpture shows some of its parts as raised up
against those, which are flat on the outside part of a
two-dimensional area depending on how depth has
been involved. It can be executed with materials like
clay, cement, wood and metal et cetera.
Most times, the process of making a relief artwork
depends on demands stated in a task at hand. That
is to say, it can also be creatively produced in other
variations of low or inverse, high relief and abstract et
cetera. Here is how:
a. Bas-relief (Basso Rilievo or low relief) displays low relief
projections of ideal images. It is nice to use bas-relief
on sculpture compositions that contain very many
figures. For a clear example, look at the surface of a
coin—officially used as money. A coin is almost always
made with symbolic images appearing as low relief or
bas-relief.
b. High or full relief (Alto Rilievo) shows images leaping
out from a background surface. Rich (1988, 8) explains,
“This is the highest type of relief. The forms are often
modelled in the full round, but remain attached to the
background, although some portions ... may be entirely
free from the background.” High relief contains high
projections so much as almost three-dimensional.
c. Inverse relief or sunken, hollow (intaglio relief)
sculpture artworks are made by cutting shapes into the
surface of a material to form a hollowed out negative
representation of an image.
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