Bronze sculpture is a beautiful art medium that can produce a lot of great items such as busts and other types of sculptures. Bronze is the most popular type of metal for casting sculptures. The reason is because many common bronze alloys have an unusual quality for metals that give it time to slightly expand before the bronze sets, so it has the ability to fill all of the fine details inside a mold. Bronze is a strong metal and does not get brittle. This helps when making a bronze sculpture; many other types of material such as ceramic and stone can have the tendency of being brittle and chipping. The one disadvantage to bronze sculptures is the value of the material. Very few ancient bronze sculptures still exist because many of the sculptures were melted down to commemorate a victory over another country or melted down to make weapons from.

The Greeks were the first people to begin scaling life size figures out of bronze. There are still a few examples of this such as the Victorious Athlete which was preserved by seawater and was rescued to display in a museum. There are many more Roman examples of bronze sculptures. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians also learned various techniques in order to create beautiful masterpieces in bronze. Many of these statues and other works of bronze are displayed in museums today.

The process of making bronzes are complicated, but may people take on the challenge in order to make something beautiful out of this particular type of metal. There are different types of casting processes that can be used to cast bronze, including lost-wax casting, investment casting, sandcasting, and centrifugal casting. All of these skills can be learned by sculptures, and once they learn all of them they can stick with the particular casting process that they prefer most.

The way that most large sculptures are made is by making multiple smaller molds in order to get the right proportions and pose. Then, an intermediate mold is made to perfect all of the find details. If it is an extremely large scaled sculpture, one more intermediate may be made. The final sculpture is made with a material on the insides so that the piece is not as heavy as pure bronze. The modern way of making a large sculpture is also utilizing welding techniques in order to put pieces together rather than trying to get a perfect sculpture out of one pour in a mold.

The way an artist will finish their bronze sculpture is by polishing the bronze. Some artists will put a corrosive material like patina on that will give them more ability to control the final color and finish of the sculpture. There is also a softer bronze called ormolu that is coated with gold to produce more of a matte gold finish. It was popular in 18th century France and is found in a lot of wall sconces, clocks, and garnitures. It makes a clear ring when tapped, so you can tell that they are made of bronze and not a cheaper metal.