The Concept Drawing, Some Thoughts, and Initial Experiments
My first thought about this sculpture was to make it as large as I could possible make it. I settled on eight feet tall because that’s the height of insulation foam board – it comes in 4×8 sheets from Home Depot, is readily available, and lightweight.
I began by drawing diagrams for how much foam board I would need to make this a solid piece. To make a solid block that was eight feet tall and four feet wide, I would need 24 sheets. At $21 per sheet, the cost comes to $504. Which I simply don’t have, right now.
So I started thinking of ways to cut costs. I started by shrinking the project down to 4x4x4 feet. This cut the cost in half. I will also need to spend about $100 on the adhesive to build the block up and foam coat to skim coat the sculpture after it’s carved.
I thought about making it hollow and went through several mock-ups of hollow, geodesic forms but that only added to my “problems to solve” pile.
So, in the end, I have decided to go with the 4x4x4 built up block of foam which will then be carved down into shape. 4 feet tall is still respectable and will give a good sense of what I am wanting to do when it is situated in the yard.
Right: Diagram of how the foam sheets will be glued up and how the head will be carved from the block.
The Maquette
I purchased two sheets of project foam board, measuring 24×24 inches each. I then scored one of the sheets into 6″ squares and glued them together to form a block. After the glue was dry, I traced out the head and hair shapes.
Rough carving with hot knife and Xacto blade –
This was done mainly to answer some questions about how the hot knife works (I’d never used one before), if it would slice through the glue that I used to sandwich these sheets together, what kind of mess I needed to anticipate (the large carving is going to happen outside), and just how long the process might take. Everything worked well; the learning curve for the hot knife was fairly short and the carving happened very quickly.
Local Sources for Large EPS (styrofoam) Block
I sent out a couple of emails to two companies that manufacture large EPS block and who look to have locations in the Puget Sound area. This is to avoid the shipping costs for a large block, if possible.
The first company (univfoam.com) has the ability to manufacture two sizes of block – the first is 36x48x192 inches which translates out to 3x4x16 feet. The second is 50x70x290 which translates out to a little over 4×5.5×24 feet. Their facilities also have huge hot wire cutters which can be computer driven so it opens up the possibility to have the block profile cut out for me. This would allow me to work on refining the sculpt immediately. Their quote for a 4x4x4 1.5# density block was $385.
A second company, located in Renton, WA, offers a 4x4x4 ft 1.5# density block for $295, not including shipping. (geofoamamerica.com).
Giant Head Sculpture In Process