Relief Sculpture

RESEARCH ON RELIEF SCULPTURE IN PREPERATION FOR SCULPTURE WORKSHOP

In Relief Sculpture the sculptural elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material. By carving away and removing sections of material from the background the foreground is given the effect of popping out as a raised sculpture.

There are different types of relief dependent on the level of projection between the subject and background. Low relief or Bas relief only sees a shallow distinction between back and foreground, Mid relief and finally High relief where over 50% of the material is removed and there may be undercut areas. As well as this, less commonly there is also Sunken relief, most often seen in ancient Egyptian carvings. As we are turning our relief into a flat cast there can be no undercuts, therefore meaning we will be creating low reliefs.

Relief is more suitable for depicting complex scenes and scenarios than traditional fully defined sculpture, such as the battles and tableus depicted on many architectural reliefs. A good example of just how complex reliefs can become is the Frieze of Parnassus (shown below) which runs 64 meteres in length around the bottom of the Albert Memorial in London. Many of the feet and heads of the 169 characters displayed are completely isolated from the background, only to be joined at the back.