Colored concrete bas relief panel for the new city pool building to be inset into the exterior concrete block wall by the entrance. The design has been discussed in previous posts last summer, the techniques on the original clay model which was my own design based around the drawings of the actual pool and walkway layout. The design incorporates raised letters which were executed on the clay model using some novel-to-me but time proven techniques for creating raised letters in sculptures found in a 1930s era sculpture book.
The book suggested that such raised letters were almost never hand formed individually in the clay as they simply cannot be easily modelled uniformly and exacting, or without a lot of time. The technique I used was based on the 1930s concepts but modified for my situation and methods, essentially I purchased the required commercially made wood letters, made a quick rubber mold of them as a group, poured the letters in different formula mold rubber, and then cast a plaster mold of the group of rubber letters. The plaster mold was then used to hand-press clay into, once the clay letters firmed up a little and could be removed from the plaster mold they were afixed to the clay model in their appropriate spaced locations already lightly marked out.
The end result was perfect, every 1/4″ raised letter neatly and evenly shaped and spaced.