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Description
I wasn't planning on doing another wax tutorial but I am just wrapping up a commission that is kind of unusual and a bit wacky, and also is a type of carving that is very important for any sculptor to learn but is not often explained in recent years. This wax carving will be a relatively low relief carving and be for a belt buckle that will be cast in sterling silver. I really want to share some of the more advanced techniques that I frequently use so I will try to omit some of the redundant info that I already shared in my other tutorials, if you haven't seen them you can find them in the wax carving tutorial folder in my gallery. In the photo you can see that I have a sketch of the buckle on the left and a slab of jewelers wax with the image replicated onto the surface. In this case I used a white transfer paper under the drawing to transfer the image to the wax with a scribe. I didn't bother to trace all of the lines of the design since as you carve into the piece much of the lines will be lost along the way. This is the same common type of transfer paper that is commonly used by painters and comes in several different colors. The slab of wax that I am using is 4inches square just like it comes from the factory and is filed down to 3/16ths of an inch thick, which will be the maximum height of my relief carving. The basic concept of a relief carving is to start with a pre determined thickness of material and carve in a forced perspective manner to trick the eye into thinking it looks like a full round sculpture, when in reality the entire piece will only be 3/16 of an inch thick. If you have never used this technique before it can seem daunting but in reality it is pretty simple and much faster than sculpting something full round.

Description
I wasn't planning on doing another wax tutorial but I am just wrapping up a commission that is kind of unusual and a bit wacky, and also is a type of carving that is very important for any sculptor to learn but is not often explained in recent years. This wax carving will be a relatively low relief carving and be for a belt buckle that will be cast in sterling silver. I really want to share some of the more advanced techniques that I frequently use so I will try to omit some of the redundant info that I already shared in my other tutorials, if you haven't seen them you can find them in the wax carving tutorial folder in my gallery. In the photo you can see that I have a sketch of the buckle on the left and a slab of jewelers wax with the image replicated onto the surface. In this case I used a white transfer paper under the drawing to transfer the image to the wax with a scribe. I didn't bother to trace all of the lines of the design since as you carve into the piece much of the lines will be lost along the way. This is the same common type of transfer paper that is commonly used by painters and comes in several different colors. The slab of wax that I am using is 4inches square just like it comes from the factory and is filed down to 3/16ths of an inch thick, which will be the maximum height of my relief carving. The basic concept of a relief carving is to start with a pre determined thickness of material and carve in a forced perspective manner to trick the eye into thinking it looks like a full round sculpture, when in reality the entire piece will only be 3/16 of an inch thick. If you have never used this technique before it can seem daunting but in reality it is pretty simple and much faster than sculpting something full round.