To see more and discover the full range of casts we do in every material visit the Examples page.
Specialist Paint Finishes
Our plain white resin or plaster casts may have a specialist paint finish applied if you prefer. The type of paint used will depend on the base material, the desired effect and the intended location of the piece. For instance outdoor or marine environment pieces will need different treatments from indoor ones.
These finishes are charged individually but as a guide a single gloss or metallic colour would add around £100 to a short torso or bottom sized cast.
Colours
Painted pieces may have an artistic treatment or, more usually, just a single colour applied. Any colour you can paint a car you can paint on resin so the options are virtually unlimited. We can also match a colour to any swatch you bring in or to a standard RAL, British Standard or Pantone reference number.
Realistic stone or other paint effects can also be applied to create a very convincing simulacrum for sandstone for instance. Other stones and marble effects may be ordered. Before applying the paint effect we treat the surface to first create the texture of real stone.
These finishes we create are similar to those used on film sets and bespoke interiors, a legacy of Jamie’s previous lives as a movie SFX technician and a specialist paint finisher to interior designers. Our realistic paint finishes are all charged individually but due to the time and skill required they do substantially increase the price of the casts.
History
The painting of figurative sculptures has a long history. Artists have long sought to create realistic depictions of their subjects. The combination of sculpture and painting was hence inevitable. We’re familiar for instance with the exquisite painting and inlay on ancient Egyptian artefacts as they have generally survived with their paint intact. What is less widely known is how brightly painted the ancient Roman and Greek marbles and bronzes were. What are familiar to us as plain marble statues were originally painted, although few have survived to tell the tale. They look very unfamiliar now when reproduced in their original colour schemes as is now popular in museum collections.
This historical painting was generally an attempt at realism although they look more like toy soldiers than highly realistic works of contemporary masters like Duane Hanson, John de Andrea and more recently The Chapman Brothers & Ron Mueck.
The more artistic use of single colours over a whole statue has been largely a modern art phenomenon following the invention and mass production of industrial paints and dyes. These often mimic the long tradition of applying patinas to colour bronze statues. Latterly some artists have begun realistically painting bronze as well, although to our mind this is not how bronze should be treated!