Modelling Still Life and Natural Forms
Senior 1 · Fine Arts
Modelling Still Life and Natural Forms
Lesson 4 of 4
22 min
Close your eyes and touch an avocado, a banana leaf, a piece of tree bark and a ripe mango: each surface feels different. Texture is the way a surface feels, or looks as if it would feel. Once the forms of your still life are right, texture is what makes each object believable and separates one from another. Then careful drying and finishing turn a soft model into a piece you can display.
Texture cannot rescue a lopsided shape, so correct the forms first. Hold the model against a plain wall and look at its outline, its silhouette, from four sides. Compare each object with the real one: is the gourd's neck too thick? Is the avocado too round? Add clay with score and slip, or scrape it away with a loop tool or an old spoon. Then smooth the surface with a damp sponge or fingertip. Use very little water: too much turns the surface to slime and weakens it.
Keza's still life is well formed, but from across the room the gourd, the avocados and the leaf all look like the same smooth clay. She plans a different texture for each:
Now the rough avocados stand out against the shining gourd. Contrast between textures makes each object easy to read.
You can leave the clay its natural colour, or colour it with earth pigments, the same colours used in imigongo: red from red soil, white from kaolin (white clay) and black from charcoal ground to powder. Mix each with a binder so that it sticks, such as cooked cassava paste or white PVA glue thinned with water, and brush it on. A thin coat of PVA mixed with an equal amount of water protects the surface. Finally, give your work a label: title, your name, the materials and the date.
| Check | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Form | Is each object recognisable from every side? |
| Structure | Does anything sag? Are there cracks at the joins? |
| Texture | Does each object have a suitable texture, with contrast between them? |
| Composition | Do the objects overlap and look like one group from more than one side? |
| Finish | Is it clean, neatly coloured and labelled? |
This dish was made in France in the late 1500s by a follower of the potter Bernard Palissy (about 1510 to 1590). It is a relief crowded with natural forms: a snake coils in the centre, fish swim round it, lizards and a frog rest at the edges, and ferns, leaves and shells fill the gaps. Palissy and his followers made many of these creatures lifelike by pressing clay into moulds taken from real animals, shells and plants. Look at the textures: the scales of the snake, the ridged shells, the feathery ferns and the pebbly background all feel different, even in a photograph.
These small pots, utubindi, are carried by dancers in Rwanda. Compare the two parts of each pot. The lower body is smooth and red; the shoulder is covered with fine, close marks, like those left by rolling a twisted cord or a carved roller over damp clay, a way of decorating pots used by potters across the Great Lakes region. The contrast between the rough band and the smooth body is what makes the pots so striking.
Warning
Safety
Tip
Form first, then texture, then a slow dry. Give each object its own texture, and make the textures contrast. In the exam, name the technique AND the surface it creates: “stippling, for the bumpy skin of the avocado”.
What is the difference between actual texture and visual texture?
Solution: actual texture can be felt, like grooves pressed into clay; visual texture only looks rough or smooth because it is painted or drawn.
Suggest a texture technique for each: the veins of a leaf; tree bark; the skin of an orange.
Solution: impressing a real leaf (and incising the midrib); combing; stippling.
Byiringiro dried his model in the sun to finish it quickly. The leaf edges cracked and curled. Explain why and what he should do next time.
Solution: the thin edges dried and shrank much faster than the thick parts. Next time he should dry the model slowly in the shade, loosely covered, and wrap the thin parts in damp paper at first.
Give two ways to finish an air-dried model.
Solution: paint it with earth pigments (red soil, white kaolin, charcoal) mixed with a binder such as cassava paste or thinned PVA; or leave it natural and seal it with thinned PVA. Burnishing at the leather-hard stage also gives a finish.
Remember
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
