Base &
Sculpture Making
for Mosaics

Create lightweight, refined and highly customized bases and sculptures for fine art mosaics.

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If you’ve ever dreamed of creating your own detailed, customized bases and sculptural forms for mosaics and mixed media, without the use of messy concrete, this is the class for you!

After years of teaching this popular workshop in studios across the country, I’m thrilled to offer it online. Students once traveled far and wide to attend, and now all of the lessons (plus valuable bonus material) are available at your fingertips with lifetime access.

Here’s why you might love creating your own base:

Total creative control — design custom 2D bases and 3D sculptures that perfectly match your artistic vision instead of trying to force your mosaic idea onto a shape that wasn’t made for it.
Greater self-expression — sculpt forms that reflect your unique style before any mosaic materials are added. Sculpting your own form opens the door to curves, movement, personality, and storytelling that generic substrates can’t provide.
Lightweight structural options — create strong yet graceful forms that won’t add unnecessary bulk to your mosaic.
Intention — learn to shape and refine your base while anticipating your mosaic design to maximize and beautifully integrate the two.
More dynamic, sculptural results — build forms that go beyond flat substrates and open new possibilities for dimensional mosaic art.

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The Challenges:

You’d like to create one-of-a-kind bases so your art is original from the inside out, but you keep getting stuck with…

Fear of “messing it up” — without guidance, sculpting bases feels intimidating, so you might stick to the pre-made options that are available even though it limits your art.
Heavy and bulky outcomes — If you’ve had the courage to try your hand at your own base, you might have used industrial products like concrete, metal lath or styrofoam. They’re all very messy and cumbersome.

sharra frank the challenges of base and sculpture making

No more searching for the “perfect” ready-made base!

After this course, you’ll have the confidence and technical know-how to design and build one-of-a-kind sculptures that are lightweight, durable, and uniquely yours.

My methods provide artful options that give grace, control and ease to the process and outcomes. The mosaic adds on another layer of thickness to the sculpture and I teach how to anticipate that while making the form so that you do not end up with a bulky mosaic.

Start creating unique bases

What You’ll Learn

We’ll cover a variety of projects including:

Pear Sculpture

Shrine Box

Butterfly Form

You’ll learn fundamental skills like:

My favorite sculpting products, tools, and techniques (developed and used in commissioned artworks since 2006).
How to create custom substrates, armatures, and 2D/3D sculptural bases ready for mosaic application. Gain confidence knowing how the armature and form are built, instead of guessing what’s inside a pre-made shape.
The art of designing pleasing shapes and silhouettes that elevate your finished mosaic.
Tips for adding elegance and strength while working with high-strength sculptural materials in a fine art context.

This course is lecture and demo-based, with plenty of inspiration and real student examples included. While it does not cover mosaic application, you’ll learn how to anticipate and prepare for your design throughout the sculptural process.

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