The Lava Lamp?

A few holes are now cut into the plaster wire structure and the edges smoothed with plaster and scrim. Bryn says it's gynaecological. Both the inside and outside are part of the sculpture. I reach my arm inside like a vet facilitating a calf's birth.




With a light inside it has a totally different feel and aura.

The Thing

2 more hours of applying plaster earlier today have resulted in this. I am deliberately leaving holes in the structure, possibly with a view to lighting it from the inside.

Direct Plaster

I've also got this going. It's direct plaster onto chicken wire inspired by the fabulous Audrey Reynolds.
I cut some chicken wire and then connected/sealed it into a pillow shape. I am looking for a lot of in and out in the sculpture. I am interested in the rippled surface of seeds like dates and nuts and have attempted to recreate this here.









Scrim is cut and dipped into wet plaster, then applied directly to the chicken wire. I have used two different types of scrim, one a tight knit gauze and anotherthat is woolier and thicker.

Here's a couple of hours worth of plaster applied. It's getting heavy.








But here I am lifting the alternative F.A. Cup

Lost Wax at Home

When Mrs T was not looking, I did some lost wax at home in the kitchen. I really like this one.

I made this one in a plastic water bottle which was easy to cut away once the plaster had set

Emergence sans Sprues

The sprues have been cut away and a small amount of finishing applied to the metal with files, colour powder and elbow grease. It's probably best left fairly natural though

Emergence

ॐ शांति शांति शांति

The aum on the left is plaster, painted in metallic acrylics. On the right is the original clay fired with a metallic glaze.

Lost Wax Process 5

It is difficult to break the plaster casing out of the tin - it took 2 hours! I had greased the inside with wax but obviously insufficiently. Anyway ... eventually I chipped it all away to reveal this ...

Glazing

Each week I have been trying out new glaze effects on those bit of clay I made in September. The purple wisteria colour is a matt underglaze which was fired then covered with a clear glaze and refired to produce the more shiny effect. The two browner pictures are mainly clear glaze with just a little colour beneath.

Lost Wax Process 4

The wax sculpture is then inverted, a reservoir added on the bottom and it is then set in plaster











The plaster cast is then set in the wax melter. The wax slowly melts over about an hour

Lost Wax Process 3

Lost Wax Process 2

The finished wax is a human-like form emerging from the primordial waters. Sprues are added to aid the flow of molten metal to all parts of the sculpture.

Matsya

Beautiful South Indian lost wax bronze

Lost Wax

So I started another lost wax project, getting some inspiration from both my clay models and a beautiful South Indian bronze of Vishnu as Matsya that I picked up in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. I bought some low melt metal from Tiranti's near Warren Street. The man assured me it was lead free pewter - however it seems to have a smidgeon of the stuff therein. Please wash your hands before you eat your rice & curry.

More Gel Flex Aums

Due to the success of last season's must have aum, I made a new clay model and a gel flex mould. I had to melt down the first one, as I forgot to create a significant enough clay wall and gulley around the object that could act as an edge once the mould was made. Anyway, the second go worked out fine:

Clay Models

I started my second year at Mary Ward by making some shapes in clay to give me inspiration. I found I liked the shapes I could make from rolling out the clay with a rolling pin and then forming an abstract shape by rolling, throwing or dropping the resultant clay sheet. Some were fired and one has so far been glazed with a metallic finish. The glaze took 3 coats and had to be set on blocks in the kiln as the glazed bottom would have glued it to the kiln surface! Sorry.

Badger The Blogger

Alabaster

Here is a small piece of alabaster fashioned into an out of focus necklace ...

It could have been thinner but I thought I'd stop before I broke it. Anyway Mal likes it.

Stone Carving

I learnt some stone carving techniques over the summer, working mainly with soapstone. I used a gouge and a hammer and chisel to hack bits off, carve and make holes in a lump of green mottled soapstone. The finish is quite rough until smoothed down with files or rasps and buffed up with sandpaper, rag and polish.

One issue is that only when you have buffed the sculpture that you can really see all the imperfections. So it can be quite an iterative process. The piece pictured is nowhere near as smooth as it could be.

It is easier to smoothe out a smaller more regular piece like this aum.

Hand Cast in Plaster

It looks almost real. See below for the easy steps a person should take if you want to cast your own body parts for posterity!

Hand Cast

First mix the alginate with an equal volume of water. It sets very quickly so you have to mix it quickly too!








Pour the mix into a suitable container (here a sawn off water bottle) and plunge in the limb that you wish to caste. Pretty soon you are stuck fast.









Now for the life of me can I get this off?






Eventually yes! Fill with plaster and wait a while. It's best to use hard plaster such as "crystocal" but as MWC had run out I had to use a softer fine plaster which makes the mould more brittle. Finally away the alginate and here is the finished cast of my hand in a meditation mudra.

My Old Cast Off Clay Head

Is now a scary garden flower pot ... waste not, want not I say. He lost his ears and a bit of his nose when the plaster mould was made.

ॐ शांति

Hours of fun with a paintbrush and a plaster mould ...

Life Model

And then one afternoon, I was lucky enough to have a go at life modelling in clay. Renata the model sat on a revolving table which she turned a quarter every 10-15 mins. I only had two hours but decided to fire the resulting effort as it shows up quite clearly the difficulties in trying to represent the human form. My "Renata" has extremely long arms for example!

Face Casts

I touched up a couple of holes in the original cast: it's important to wet the mould first so that it doesn't suck all the moisture from any new plaster applied and cause the new to fail to bind with the old plaster. I think it looks pretty good now.

Then although the algernate was breaking up a bit (note the fissure lines and the squashed nose) I managed to put it back together and make a second cast. Interesting effects.

A third cast was made a week later from the remaining algernate bits that could still be used - see these "pieces of me". Remember to paste wet plaster onto the algernate first and then add scrim to strengthen, pasting that in with more wet plaster. The algernate was much harder after a week and more difficult to take off the plaster cast - see the bits of blue still stuck on these pieces.

The plaster masks created to hold the algernate on the face as it dried are actually quite interesting in themselves. They remind me of tribal masks from New Guinea. Perhaps I will decorate them as such.

Face Casting Again

As described with Abigail's face cast, she helped me use the same process on myself this week. You can see where the straws were sticking out of my nostrils.

What to do with ॐ s

Face Casting with Abigail

Later, I helped cette avant garde artiste - Abigail - to cast her own face! The process works as follows: cover the hair, apply vaseline to eyebrows, eyelids etc. (or they'll be extracted!), stuff some straws up your nose so that you can continue to breathe, then lie back while a friendly assistant mixes the bright blue algernate and then pours it over your head. Plaster bandage is then wrapped around the disappeared Abigail to support the algernate and make a stronger mould. The algernate sets in 3 minutes and after 15 mins we carefully peel it off to reveal the cleansed face of the victim.
In this particular case the MW bandages were old and didn't harden properly so we had to balance the mould in two bowls to keep the shape. Plaster was then carefully pressed into the mould with fine scrim (mesh) bandage to add strength. Ultimately a plaster face will be created from the mould.

I am having a go at this in a laboratory near you soon!

Gel Flex

This week I tried making a gel flex mould. Gel flex is something like vinyl and looks like sweaty cheese. I melted the gel flex cubes in this melting pot.






Next I made a simple mould in clay - it's the Indian "aum" simple - oneness with universal consciousness and all that. A clay wall is added to hold and this holds in the molten gel flex.


Here I am pouring it in.

And here is the (still quite hot) mould being prised out an hour later. Then I made a simple plaster cast and behold a slightly bubble marked but perfectly acceptable "Aum". Or even ॐ !