When making mud sculptures how can you prevent the mud from cracking or how can you fix cracks in your mud sculptures?

Answer 1

This is to all prospective 'Mud Sculpters' out there!

I am still adding sculptures to the walls of my mudbrick home, so my solutions are from many triumphs and mistakes. I hope this will help other people that feel this creative urge, but have only been disappointed with their results. For all sculptures, you need an armature to hold the sculpture where you want it. It can be of wire, nails, wire mesh,etc. Draw your sculpture onto a wall with chalk, tap nails into the sculpture outline leaving approx 1in showing, (more if the sculpture needs to stand out from the wall), also add them to the body of the work (I use galvanised clouts and roofing nails for depth, because they have good heads to hold the wires). Press wire mesh onto the nails, or wind tie wire around the nails 'every which way'.The mud should be mixed to a thick plastic/dough like consistency. Wet the area thoroughly, then push this mudmix onto the armature. Because the area the armature is being created on, dries at a different rate to the mud being used for sculpturing, the sculpture will 'crack'. This is a normal process! Leave the mud to dry until it feels 'plastic,' then spray water (sm. spray bottle), over the work in progress, only enough to dampen it. Keeping your hands, (or rubber gloves) wet, pick up more of your mix, and work it into the cracks that have formed (with your fingers), spray lightly again, and leave to dry off a bit. Keep repeating this method until most of the cracks are only hairline.

Mix a thick soup from your mud, spray with water,

and paint it (using a soft paintbrush) over the sculpture, it will need a few coats (with dry time in between). After a few times it won't have any cracks! It needs to be sealed when completely dry, (I use bondcrete, or PVA glue watered down). Free standing sculptures should be ok using the wire mesh, tie wire, and a few rebars, and a solid base (concrete) to keep the mud sculpture off the ground. It's something on my to do list!

It just takes a little patience and time!

I hope this gives some encouragement to others.

Enjoy!