Lioness and Cub - Chocolate Patina

The sculpture is mounted on a black granite base.

It is available in three different patinas: Stone, Champagne and Chocolate. The Stone patina is a marble-like pattern, it really looks like stone! The Champagne patina is closer to the original untreated bronze, but deeper and richer. The Chocolate patina is more of a traditional French Brown patina, but with some nice orange tones that give it a lot of depth. The color changes as you move around it, brilliant!

Color may vary from the images, as the application of a patina is a manual and artistic process.

The inspiration:

We were on a safari in the Serengeti in Tanzania in 2010. We came upon a couple of lionesses lounging near a tree. Suddenly we saw a single cub climbing all on one of the lionesses, playfully climbing over and around her again and again. She quietly tolerated those sharp claws as the little guy had a ball using her as a big plush pillow. He even practiced his growls and sneers, feeling quite comfortable and protected by mom and an aunt.

It was an amazing sight to see, the simple interactions within this family of fearsome animals.

Below is a brief overview of the process I use to make them:

This is a hand-made item, sculpted in clay by Terrence and individually cast in bronze by a small foundry in California. Each casting undergoes hours of labor to mold, cast, clean, and patina. Terrence oversees the process and inspects and modifies each piece as needed to achieve the final result, a truly one-of-a-kind bronze sculpture.

I started by making the initial sculpture using water-based clay, the basic material that sculptors have been using for millennia. Once completed, I carved out the inside to achieve a constant wall thickness of 1/4 inch throughout. This is done so that as the water evaporates out of the clay to harden it, it dries at a constant rate and avoids cracking.

When the clay is dry and hard, a mold is built upon it. This is the mother mold that is used to create multiple wax copies. The wax copies are used in the lost wax casting method, the age-old method of casting bronze.

The bronze casting must then go through several labor-intensive steps.  It must be assembled, cleaned up, and all imperfections due to the casting process are removed.

The final step is applying the patina. A patina is not paint. It is the actual surface of the metal whose color has been chemically altered. A common example of a patina is the normal rust that forms on the surface of iron, the chemical agent in this case being water. When applying a patina to bronze, various chemicals are used to achieve specific colors that are much more pleasing, as well as to create designs. The bronze is first heated with a blow torch in order to accelerate the reaction. Chemicals are sprayed or brushed on to the heated metal in layers, creating patterns and depths of color that are very beautiful and natural looking.