Wednesday, February 6, 2008




This is a Buddha-esque head I created. It's a contrast between the ancient iconography of statues against the very new material of industrial styrofoam. This turned out beautifully, with great depth of flecks but is one of the more time-consuming projects I've taken on.
I started with two 2-inch thick 10 foot long board of industrial styrofoam (for the larger pebbles), and broke them into 3 foot pieces that I glued together to form a solid block. I then tried sculpting it down into a face with a variety of tools from paint scrapers to brushes, but all tools left a harsh line on the pebbles. I had to scrape the pebbles down into their shape using my bare hands (and learning along the way that styrofoam sticks everywhere - clothes, hair, floor, everything).
Once I had the shape it didn't get any easier. It turned out that spraypaint melts styrofoam, thus the paint had to be against applied by hand. Brushes turned out to be too flat, so I used tootbrushes to first get the medium gray colour, then again used toothbrushes to fleckle the highlights and lowlights for a better stone look.

The final body is a colloboration - only the head is mine.

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