Latest News

March 202

Continuing my theme of insights into the processes behind my work, here is a little information about how I made the stoney texture of an Arizona landscape. The task required a little ingenuity!

First, I made hundreds of fragments of plaster which were mixed with pigments in varying earth-coloured shades. Getting the colours of my plaster pieces to match the photos of the rocks surrounding the house I was making was a challenge. When the plaster was wet, being mixed in a small bowl, rich powder colours were added by the teaspoonful: Warm Ochre, Mars Red, Caput Mortuum, Greenish Raw Umber, Burnt Umber and Van Dyke Brown. It is best to mix plaster in small quantities, as it hardens very quickly, so working and sculpting time is short. With each successive mix I tried to keep the recipe of powders consistent. Every batch inevitably varied in colour, which is to be expected, the hard part of the process was attempting to visualise the colour of the plaster when it had dried. I would take a splash of the mix and quickly dab it onto a piece of cardboard, then furiously dry it with a hair dryer to match the dried plaster to the real rock colour. When I was happy with the result I poured the plaster onto a surface, let it dry out for a day or so, and then smashed it with a small hammer to make handfuls of the tiny rocks I needed, all jagged and angular shapes.

The landscape of the model was then spread with wet plaster, also pigmented, and quickly as this dried, I sprinkled my dried rock fragments on top, then pressed a layer of scrunched aluminium foil over the surface. When the plaster had set I removed the foil, revealing a randomly created texture of angular shapes which matched the real rock landscape very well.