Sugar

So today i figured i would post some pictures of the sugar work we did in school. I had a bit of a love, hate relationship with sugar. On one hand it was fun making pieces of art with something edible. However it was a difficult medium to get used to, there are just so many things that can mess up your sugar.

There's also something called isomalt, this is a preferred alternative to sugar for showpiece work, because it will not crystallize as quickly as sugar will (however it's very expensive). If your not sure what crystallization means in the terms of sugar art, well lets just say its not good (unless its the look your going for)haha.

So the first picture is one of the first thing we made with sugar. Its mainly comprised of poured sugar. The sugar is heated to a certain temperature, mix in the color, and then poured into molds. Once the sugar is completely cooled you assemble the pieces with more of the cooked sugar. The whiskers, feathers, and ball of yarn are made from pulled sugar.

These next two pictures are of a piece that i did with a few other students. We were all divided into groups, and had to come up with a design together for a cake stand that could hold two 6" cakes, and was halloween themed. So our group went with a spooky haunted house. Most of the piece is poured sugar, the tree is straw sugar (basically where you keep pulling the sugar and folding it together, creating hundreds of tiny hollow tubes), and the "dirt" is rock sugar. Note the man with the knife chasing the woman :] So we had one day to do it, and i think we all did a really good job. We didn't make the cakes, those were from the class below us. Also in the second photo is sylvia, she was in my group.

So heres another sugar showpiece we did. This was also a group project, however this time every person had to come up with a complete design and plan on how to make a sugar showpiece, based on a famous piece of art. Then when we came in the next day we were split into groups, and as a group we had to choose who's design we were going to make. To my surprise my group chose mine! So my design was based on Roy Lichtenstein's BLAM! If your unfamiliar below is a picture of it.

So the background, base, and letters are all poured sugar. The plane is made of pulled sugar, and the flames and explosion stuff are made of pulled, poured, and straw sugar. Its a little hard to tell in the pic, but we made the background all one piece the yellow explosion cloud is all flush with the background not a separate piece.

Well thats all for today