modeling

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or art of sculpturing or forming in a pliable material, such as clay or wax.
2. n. Representation of depth and solidity in painting, drawing, or photography.
3. n. Visual shape and texture of something regarded aesthetically, especially the human face or form.
4. n. The act or profession of being a model.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or occupation of forming models, or of bringing objects or figures to a desired form; specifically, in the fine arts, the act of a sculptor in shaping his model for any piece of carving, or the art of shaping models; also, the bringing of surfaces of the carving itself into proper relief and modulated relation; in painting, etc., the rendering of the appearance of relief and of natural solidity and curvature.

Wiktionary

1. v. present participle of model.
2. n. The art of sculpting models from clay etc. to create a representation of something.
3. n. The representation of depth in a two-dimensional image.
4. n. The profession of someone who models clothes.
5. n. mathematics The construction and use of a computer model of a physical system.
6. n. The learning of a new skill by copying other people.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Fine Arts) The act or art of making a model from which a work of art is to be executed; the formation of a work of art from some plastic material. Also, in painting, drawing, etc., the expression or indication of solid form.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the act of representing something (usually on a smaller scale)
2. n. a preliminary sculpture in wax or clay from which a finished work can be copied
3. n. sculpture produced by molding