Learn how the bespoke hand painted motif on your custom metal sign is designed and made.
If you're wondering how the low relief hand painted motif on your custom cast metal sign is made this short article will explain how. The motif was for a 235 x 195 mm (9 X 7.5 inch) sand cast aluminium sign showing children playing. You'll learn about the process of creating the 2d drawing, the development of a low relief polymer clay sculpture and the final hand painting of the sand cast metal sign's motif.
Getting Started.
The area that the motif had to fit into was approximately 100 x 50mm (4 x 2 inch). An oval area representing the maximum dimensions was marked out on paper and copies were made. We started sketching out various design concepts using the ovals as guides.
Sketching the motif.
This is one of many concept sketches.
The characters and the composition both need refining.
Firstly we started sketching very loosely some design concepts. Because the wording for the sign was 'May's Room' we decided we'd have a central character of a little girl and two children, one either side, making her the focus.
Refining the sketch.
Adjustments to the composition and
refinements to the details of each character were done both on paper
and inside a photo-editing package.
From there we did a bit of research looking at a few children's storybooks to get some ideas on how to draw cute cartoon children. Once we had a feel for designing cartoon children characters we took that knowledge and applied it to the original sketch.
Final editing and printing of the sketch.
One of the final
drawing prints
trimmed and positioned on an aluminium back plate.
There were adjustments made to the scale and position of the figures. This was done in photo-editing software. The characters were placed on separate layers and adjusted. Once the composition was right any small modifications to the sketch details were made. The final 2d design for the clay sculpture was printed twice, one to lay the clay sculpture onto, the other as reference.
Sculpting the Polymer Clay.
The polymer clay low
relief sculpture
developed to the sketch stage. It was hardened in an oven ready for
detailing. The first paper copy was cut and placed on the metal back plate. Polymer clay was gradually built up over the paper sketch. Because we had to give the illusion of full 3d perspective and depth with the thickness of the metal sign governing the depth of the motif, parts of the sculpture closest to the viewer were only 5mm(1/4 inch) thick, getting thinner for parts further away. The final sculpture also had to be designed so that it would 'draw' out of a sand mould easily when it was cast.
Second stage sculpting and hardening.
The finished low
relief polymer clay
sculpture has had final details added and been hardened and fixed to
the back plate ready to make an aluminium pattern.
The first stage rough sketch was made using the paper drawing as reference. With polymer clay it's best to take the sculpture to just below the final finishing stage. The sculpture was hardened in an oven for half an hour so that we could slowly build up to refine the hardened surface with more thin layers of clay.
Final stage sculpture detailing.
Final layers of clay were applied to put in the small details such as fingers eyelids, smiles etc. These have to be done with care so that the sculpture could easily be cast using the sand cast foundry process.
Working on the aluminium pattern.
The motif is cast
onto a back plate
to make the aluminium production pattern that your sign is cast off.
The final sculpted motif was cast in aluminium on the back plate. The resulting production pattern was hand finished to sharpen any detail lost in the reproduction process. We made a small alteration to the smile of the little girl on the left. This was done by grinding and filing the original detail away and resculpting with epoxy putty.
Designing the colour scheme.
To design a colour
scheme a photo of
the final motif sculpture was tinted in a photo-editing package to
simulate the hand painting of the metal sign.
The next stage was photographing the back plate. This was brought back into the photo-editing software. We made separate colour layers of each part of the figures. This layering allowed us to change skin, hair, eyes, lips and clothes colours. These quick changes to colour schemes would be very difficult to do with real paint.
Painting the aluminium sign.
The virtual hand painted colour scheme was printed out and used as reference for the painting of the sand cast aluminium sign. The sign was primed and then painted with a white background and black border and lettering. The motif was painted using permanent artists acrylic paints. The hand painted motif had extra fine details added such as the lining around some of the shadow areas, football and the boy's shorts not in the original colour scheme.
Interested in seeing more artwork or painting ideas for house name plates? If so please visit my Facebook page. You'll find more artwork updated regularly and you can also ask me anything you'd like to know.
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