PB Cohen Creations

I'm taking a casting class this semester at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Many years ago I took a one-day workshop in casting, during which I learned one thing, and one thing only: wax carving is hard! (I no longer have the weird silver blob that I created that day, or I'd show it to you. I wonder what happened to that...?) So this time around, I'm concentrating on carving the wax, and casting a few things. No serious thought on what to do with the finished bits, no worries about designing around cast pieces — just the wax carving. Still working on it. This is my first attempt at carving a bird-like creature out of wax:

To be more precise, I'm doing reasonably well at carving tiny things in wax, but I'm definitely having a hard time seeing in three dimensions. This is my first time at any sort of sculpture (that I remember, anyway), so I guess I'm doing okay. But still, it's not quite right. This little fellow isn't finished, but I got stuck on the right side of the beak — which is the left side on this photo. You can click on these pictures for bigger versions, and I was hoping the extreme close-ups would help me, but they didn't. Truth is, I took away too much wax from that side, and am stuck with it. I tried adding a little blob of sticky wax there, and am currently trying to shape that, but the sticky wax doesn't really carve. It's possible a well-placed file will do the trick, but I'm not sure yet. I might try casting him in bronze (much cheaper than silver) just to see what happens. In the meantime, I've started working on a few more little wax sculptures. We'll see what happens. Slow, slow, slow. But if I can figure it out, it'll be fun! (And now that I've stopped dreaming that I'm carving up my wrists, things are going much better!)

I keep doing birds, but I think I should try some monsters, or fantasy creatures — since if I don't get them "right" nobody will know but me! The other thing I might be able to do is cut my sculptures down the middle, to create two "halves." Sort of a bas-relief treatment. That way if the two sides don't match each other, or if the whole thing ends up too wide (two of my current problems) it won't matter.