Faux Bronze (2014)

One of the things I have learned at my Wood- Marble imitation classes is feax bronze. Which is a technique to turn an ordinary sculpture into a (fake) bronze one.

As a practice model I've used a cement statue of a lion holding a crest. (Which I use as a book stand.)

Finished sculpture

I started by applying a brown coating of acrylic paints. Acrylics are used because cement reacts on other types of paints.

Beginning stage:
I forgot to take a before picture in time.

Brown Sculpture.

After this coating, the sculpture is painted with a special Antique Bronze acrylic paint. This is a more gold tone of color than regular bronze, which is more orange/ copper colored.

When that has dried properly, the whole sculpture is coated with "stove polish". It's a black substance used to, as the word implies, polish stoves. Once this is rubbed on, rub it off again using a clean cloth. If you have a big sculpture, do this in steps; as you don't want to have it dried up and unable to rub it off anymore.

Now it looks already a bit older as the black residue remains in the deeper area's.

To finish it off we used some (gold) bronze powder to accent some highlights using a dry brushing technique.

Finished right side

Finished left side

 In the mean time I've already done some more statuettes, I'll put them here once I've got the pictures ready.