Peacocks from Polystyrene / Styrofoam by Sculpture Studios

Welcome to Sculpture Studios. Every now and then we have an international job request and for this job here our client was Ruby Barber calling all the way from Germany. She wanted two polystyrene peacocks made so they could be decorated with a floral arrangement for a wedding ceremony. She sent over some concept images and said she wanted the rough form of a peacock body without its tail life-size. This meant the two peacocks were around 600 millimetres in length and we start off by cutting the profile out using a hot wire. Aidan then uses wire brushes to hone down on the shape. As this is going to be covered with flowers this doesn't need to be highly detailed but Aidan still wants to give it a nice form with rough wings and feathers as we don't know what size the flowers are going to be. This also helps show the client the quality of our work and they can see the time and effort has been put in even though we've only quoted for a rough shape. We always find it interesting when we're contacted from various locations around our own country as we're often approached by clients from as far as the north of England or even Scotland. We wonder why they've come all the way down and contacted us from the other end of the island. Obviously we're not going to complain about being contacted for potential work but we always think aren't there any other companies nearer that offer the same service we do and if so why us? This wonder is even more evident when we receive an international call like Ruby here. She mentioned how she couldn't find anyone local in Germany that offered the same service we do and that she could actually communicate properly with as she wanted someone that would understand her requirements. She found us on the internet so hopefully all these long distance and international contacts mean the website works well and our company is accessible to far greater reaches than our local area. Once Aidan's happy with the form the peacocks are then sanded down. For polystyrene pieces we would normally give the sculptures a plaster render but Ruby needs to stick pins in the peacocks to add the decoration and this would ruin the surface. So here we're going over with a muslin cloth and white emulsion paint and this works well for a few reasons. Firstly it seals the polystyrene and helps lose that polystyrene bead texture and it generally makes the sculpture a little more durable. It also allows the client to push pins through the surface without damaging the polystyrene itself. So there we are with two polystyrene peacocks created here in our studio in England and sent over to Germany. Here's a finished shot of one of the peacocks decorated on location. We'd like to thank Ruby for the project and we hope the wedding goes well and let's hope the peacocks didn't give the dress too much a run for its money. Please feel free to leave any comments below as they're always appreciated and hit the subscribe button for our latest videos. You can like Sculpture Studios on Facebook and for more of our work visit www.sculpturestudios.co.uk. Thank you very much for watching.