Relief Sculpture Restoration Project

Summer Project - Relief Sculpture Restoration

This past summer I had the opportunity to paint this relief sculpture off of a historic home in East Grand Rapids

The interior design agency that I was working with, Lauren James Studios, gave it to me with a specific palette of colors to use, and a request to clean it and repair chips in the plaster..

Cleaning off the grime

I started by cleaning the sculpture with a toothbrush, water and baking soda. It was satisfying to watch the grime and gunk come off of this piece. Take a loot at what it looked like after scrubbing it.

Priming the relief

After repairing the plaster, I primed the sculpture and created a sketch of the final piece.
This helped me get an idea of how the colors would work together.

Adding some paint

Now for the fun part!
I started to lay down some of the paint and covered the large areas with their base colors.
It became clear at this point that I could not paint the details without taping them off.

Taping off the background

Using an exacto-knife I carefully cut out small pieces of tape and used it to cover the background.
This would allow me to paint in the details without worrying about ruining my background colors.

Almost Finished

After some painting and carefully removing the tape, things are starting to look close to being finished!

Back in it’s rightful place

After finishing painting the relief sculpture we hung it back where it came from!
The colors go well with the bricks, and it makes the entry way pop!

That was a fun project!