One homework assignment in Foundation Sculpture was to sculpt a bell pepper. Now, that sounds boring – or so I thought. The twist was that we had to double it in size in the process and for an extra kick it was encouraged to find a bell pepper that had especially “sexy” and complex curves.

Unfortunately I did not get a photo of the original bell pepper. These little buggers spoil pretty fast. I was very busy sculpting and forgot to get a photo at the time. So, to give you an idea how large it is I put a regular size pen right next to the sculpture. It is a pretty amazing experience how doubling a 3D object turns out. Just by looking at my original pepper, I did not expect the sculpture to be so massive.

Also, sculpting a bell pepper is much more challenging than one would think. There’s no rule to all these curves and little “hills” and “valleys” and the object is much stranger than we think it is. Of course we see bell peppers all the time in daily life but have you really looked at the intricacies of one? I mean, really looked and thought about them?

Doubling it in size makes copying the object even harder. There’s a lot to compute and it’s quite a workout for your powers of observation. If you are interested in learning to sculpt and have never done this exercise, I strongly encourage you to do so – it’s much more interesting and educational than you would think.

I worked in water based clay, the sculpture is roughly 13″ in length, 4.5″ at the widest point and 3.5″ at the highest point.

It turns out that the shapes of a pepper can be very similar to those of the human body. Somehow it does look sexy.   🙂