Sculpture: types, genres, materials and techniques

The American writer Henry Thoreau spoke about the art of sculpture:

“The important thing is not what you do with the stone, but what the stone does to you.”

In perception, sculpture is difficult to attribute to the visual arts. Although it is no less exciting, requiring a special gift and talent of the master, a kind of craft.

Sculpture – types and genres, materials and techniques of execution – impresses with its scale. If the artist makes skillful brush strokes on the canvas, then the sculptor, in turn, performs carving with a special tool on a solid and shapeless stone surface. The talent of a master who was able to see the figure, become, the character of the statue, breathe life into it, reward with emotions and feelings, make the stone come to life, and give the viewer the tactile level to feel the warmth of touch, to pull out an exciting sense of delight is truly impressive.

The sculpture, its types and genres open up wide possibilities for the creative flight before the master. This ensures that each representative of this exquisite art form will find and fill his niche with unique works.

The sculptural variety impresses not only with its scale – from miniature figures, figurines and talismans, to statues, monuments and monuments – but also with the material used to make them. Carving on bones, precious minerals and stones, cast forms and marble – all this comes to life in the hands of a real creator – a master of his craft.

The well-known varieties of the genre of sculptures include worthy examples of portrait, historical, mythological, domestic and many other popular genres.

When creating a sculpture, the most important technique for the master is artistic expression. Among them, the structural basis is the construction of volumes, forms, plasticity in building the model, silhouette, as well as texture and, possibly, color.

Due to this, we can admire a whole galaxy of different types of sculptural masterpieces, such as a round sculpture surrounded by space and allowing you to view it from all sides, and a relief design in which the figures are partially immersed in a flat background and seem to protrude from it.

As for the material and the method of producing the sculpture, it is worth noting here several main techniques and groups of raw materials. Work with plastic materials such as clay and wax is molded. Metal products made by casting, embossing or embossing are related to foundry, carving on precious stones is a glyptic, etc.

Widely used materials since antiquity, which have become classics in the performance of almost all types of sculptural crafts, are bronze, wood, precious metals and artificial stones.

But, in fact, it does not matter what material the sculpture is made of. The main thing, according to Cicero, in each piece of marble to consider a head worthy of a cutter. For what was sculpted was already inside