Wedding Blossom Trees & Peacocks - Polystyrene / Styrofoam by Sculpture Studios

Welcome to Sculpture Studios. If you're a fan of our channel you've probably seen us creating various styles of trees in the past, like the purple olympic tree and the oak trees we made for the school entrance, but for this job we're really taking you through the process step by step. We're creating some large blossom trees and some polystyrene peacocks for a client and I must warn you now that unfortunately this was for a very prestigious event and a rather private wedding so we couldn't show off any of the finished shots with all the foliage added properly, but here we can take you through our side of the job for what turned out to be a very successful feature at the wedding reception and you're just going to have to take our word for that one. Lisa and Kisan have contacted us along with Harold from a florist in London and they're commissioning us to create two trees from polystyrene and finished with glass fiber. Once we've done our part here in the workshop the foliage will be added later on by the florist. This needs to eventually break apart into sections for transportation and installation so this means they need to be able to come apart and join back together which requires metalwork. This metalwork will also double up as the main strength of the sculpture internally. Creating this in our workshop from glass fiber is all well and good but with the indefinite amount of foliage added later on this could work out to be very heavy so belt and braces with this one to make sure the health and safety aspect is there and that nothing breaks. Blocking out from our usual billets of polystyrene or styrofoam we cut the large tree trunk section and the main branches using a hot wire and we adhere this all together using a polyurethane expanding foam. These are eventually going to be up against a wall so the branches at the back need to be more upright to allow the tree trunk to bust up closer with the front branches reaching out toward the opposite tree. Once all the foam is set and the branches are in place Aidan goes to work with a handheld hot wire to start creating the initial shape. He's going with what feels right and using concept and reference images rather than an absolute exact design. He takes away what he needs to to create the right organic feel. With the hot wiring done he uses nail brushes and begins carving. The usual sticky back tin foil makes its appearance now as we protect the polystyrene from the resin that's going on top. As this will be both an inside event as well as having a very captive audience we're going to be using a fire rated class o resin with this job. We imagine the foliage that will eventually be put on the trees later will need to be fire retardant as well. We build up in a few layers of glass fiber and with this job where the need to retain specific detail isn't particularly high a blanket coat can be built up as strong as we want it. Before any glass fiber work goes ahead we invite the client back down to the studio. Harold and Kitten came to see the trees in their polystyrene form as at this stage it's still feasible to make changes as the polystyrene can be amended a lot easier than glass fiber. Having the flourish there meant the project could be looked at and tweaked with the foliage particularly in mind with changes being suggested to make optimum use of the structure and the space. It's always nice when clients come down to the studio as it creates more of a personal rapport for the entire project rather than simply talking to someone over the phone or via email. This is also beneficial for the client themselves as they can see the sculpture in person in front of them rather than simply seeing still images or a bit of footage sent over the net. It allows Aidan to talk them through the next step of the process here in the workshop like the glass fiber and the metalwork and likewise Harold can talk through the blossom installation once all of our work is complete. Once everything has been tweaked amended and approved by the client it's now time for the glass fiber. For this initial blanket coat we're going on with about four ounces in thickness which is strong enough to retain its shape on its own with the metalwork installed later to help with the load bearing of the blossom. By the time we've cut the branches, removed the polystyrene, laminated metalwork in, re-laminated the branches to the main body and adding extra strength for the joins this will be a solid fiberglass structure. If you've seen our polystyrene peacocks video these are made in exactly the same way. They're carved by hand from polystyrene with paint and muslin cloth finish so the client can stick pins and flowers to it. If you haven't seen the video I've left a link in the YouTube description below. You might have noticed we've called in a few extra hands in the studio to get this all done in time as we actually have a very tight turnaround for this so particular thanks to Daryl and Laura for coming in to help get this all done. When the majority of the fiberglass work has been completed we need to cut the branches off to start working on the interior. We've created nice neat cut lines and labelling all the branches so there's no confusion of what goes where. We're going to be hollowing out the majority of each branch so a good length of metalwork can be installed and we also need to hollow out the interior of each trunk as well. This all involves cutting a fiberglass section from the side of each trunk or branch and removing the polystyrene and foil layer. The feet for the peacocks are being modelled in clay and though we don't have a clip because we were probably filming something else this was then covered in a layer of silicon rubber and then gone over with plaster of paris to create a jacket. This will be a perfect mould for getting duplicate detailed casts of the original model which we'll create in resin with a metalwork pole. The pole is positioned first inside the mould before a resin mix is poured in around it. Once this is set we extract the cast and clean up any areas that are untidy. All of the metalwork you see in the studio is custom built by Fine Limit Welding. We've had 12 branches worth of male and female tubes created for the branches and this metalwork base for the trunk that everything will be welded to. We've added casters to the base so these trees will be easy to position when set up in the venue. With the metalwork installed inside the branches it's now time to re-laminate the panels back on. Martin has come down to weld the female parts of the tube to the inside of the tree trunk. The branches each need to be positioned and cut to size to ensure they both fit as well as have enough contact with the base and other branch metalwork to be welded securely. Now that all the construction's complete we're going to begin work on the decoration side of the project. So that we lose the fiberglass texture we're going over with layers of our flexible concrete render and this will give the tree a stippled rough exterior that will more closely resemble bark once it's all painted. You'll see Aidan applying this with a brush later on so you can see the concrete render close up. I did say we'll be showing you our entire process in which case a job wouldn't be complete here at Sculpture Studios without a little dance to release the tension. We're going to be using emulsion paints to decorate the tree which are cost-effective as this is only going to be used for a one-day event and this also allows the client to repaint the sculpture if they decide on a different colour or to retouch any areas that might get knocked. Yeah nice one Liam look at him go! Aha! Call me working late again. Not really I've set this up it's three o'clock in the morning now I've come back in the evening. Compressor's going. Now Kitten and Lisa phoned me up and they said we've seen you on the internet can we please have a meeting come down and talk through this project and we said yeah it's fantastic they've got a great job. I've built things like this before so I was quite confident it's just the timing aspect of it just a very very tall order and that's the thing I wasn't sure about and I really didn't want to let my clients down so in the end I sort of went through the whole project on paper and try to manage it within my head and on the desktop sort of thing and I agreed to the project and once the monkey's on my back it's my job to get the job done. We've cut the branches through there's six branches to every tree and we've numbered them one to six and we've made sure it has a male to female metalwork structure on the inside nice and strong one slides in another so there's only one way around and that's the way it can be. We know it's structurally sound because that's the most important thing health and safety as well as well as the art side of it and making it look great. Now I'm just here tonight and I'm using this kind of concrete mix and you lay it on about one millimeter thickness and in the morning it's lovely and hard and then we can sand it down and make good the join. We can take the branches out and then we can start applying colors greens and blacks and a little touch of mauve which is the willow colors. The florist once it leaves the studio here on Monday morning the friars can take their part of the job over fix all the branches into the stems and make it come to life basically so yeah thank you very much indeed for coming to Sculpture Studios and I hope the whole project carries on to be really successful for you. Thank you very much indeed. Well there we have it only the painting side of it from us now and then it's on to the florist to be finished. Once again apologies for not being able to show the final final product but as is the nature with our work sometimes with non-disclosure agreements and privacy on projects like this we tailor our work to our clients requirements and in some cases this means keeping things on the down low but we hope you've enjoyed the sneaky peek at our part of the process that we've managed to show you here today. 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 follow at Aidan Hines on Twitter and for more of our work visit SculptureStudios.co.uk. Thank you very much for watching. Right let's just put some of these here chuck a couple more oh wrong blossom uh yeah that'll do that'll do.