The Creation of a Sugar Sculpture

Sugar and I are not friends. There is lots of burning, breaking, shaking, etc. At the end of the day, your incredibly delicate sculpture still looks cartoonish. Just needed to get that out there.

This week we made sugar sculptures! This sculpture is made of pastillage, pulled sugar, and poured sugar. I used luster dust, airbrush paint, and colorings to create the different effects.

First, you shape and dry the pastillage into the desired shapes. It is stark white when uncolored. It needs to dry for 2-3 days, longer if the climate is wet. Once dry, I painted my pastillage stems with yellow, green, and brown airbrush paint. I need some more practice with the airbrush gun to get the color more even, but overall it was not bad.

The pastillage leaves you cut out, score and dry as well. I also airbrushed and luster dusted the leaves.

The “granite” rocks are pastillage that is dyed at the beginning, marbled together, and then covered in white luster dust.

The pastillage plaque is a giant and extremely fragile piece of pastillage with a wood grain relief rolled into the dough when it is still soft. I then airbrushed and luster dusted for more definition.

The remaining time this week was spent torturing our fingers making pulled sugar roses. Mine do not look 100% like real roses, but I am happy with the outcome. And yes, they are very fragile and they broke countless times on me, accompanied by loud screams and anguish.

                         

                        

                       

Poured sugar holds the entire sculpture together. We made two disks, 18 cm and 16 cm, and a base 16 cm by 25 cm. Here are the disks of Alice, Rachel, and myself. Mine are in the center.

All that is left is the very worst part-composition! If you have seen the Kings of Pastry movie, you know how horrible it is when these break, and how easily they break. Oh, it stresses me out even to think of it, and I’m already finished, (spoiler alter) sans any horrific crash. This sculpture involved a lot of uncomfortable angles and delicate hands, but not nearly as much perfect balance as many sculpture require, thank goodness. You glue all of the pieces together with liquid isomalt, piece by piece, slowly.

Here is my finished product!