Cow Head Progress

I got my mold completely finished and tested for my second round of larger cow heads. (larger than faux bovinae and meant to replace that piece)

The mold is made of Smooth On "Stroke" brush on silicone. The mother mold is plastipaste in three parts. I started this piece before the summer and finally got around to finishing the mother mold. It holds together fairly well. I was able to test the mold today using a decent amount of Smooth-On Smooth Cast 300 White Urethane Resin.  I made the mistake of trying to add more resin to the piece once the original resin had cured and got a bit of overlap. I went over the overlap with a rotary tool and was able to do some touch ups to get the piece closer to normal again.

I plan to cast a few wax ones Thursday and Friday for a melting piece. I might paint the resin one for fun and mount it as well.

First layer or two of brush on silicone

two of the three part mother mold

finishing the mother mold

Inside out cow head. The is the view inside the silicone mold

Resin next to clay

some demel work started

Resin Cow. Moo.

From Another Angle. My hand in there for size. Some Dremel work started.
Still a bit dirty from in the mold. Once touch ups are done it will be primed
and painted.

Light Switch Cover

I decided it was time for a change of pace and so I did a quick 2 day project. It was a lot of fun!

I made kitty light switch covers!! I thought they would be fun gifts for my cat loving friends.

Took some chevant clay and sculpted the design over switch plate

brush on silicone mold

Mother mold of plasti paste

After the mold is done

Filling with resin

Example of the finished wall piece.

The next thing I would like to do is prime and paint a few to see how that looks

Sculpture update

I just posted a big post about ceramics. Check that out if you haven't yet.

In other news. I took some new photos of my progress in sculpture. Just a few updates but worth posting I think.

Updated photo of aluminum under head

Side view aluminum underhead

can kind of see my reflection in these. yellow shirt.

front view outer head in oil based modeling clay.

side view

Pony tail is chopped off. It was not working well with the mold/etc.

Anna helping cover the head with plastic and then water based clay. Creating a blanket mold.

Mohawk before the plaster is added. Anna helped a lot on these steps.  She helped me make sure nothing went wrong with this mold. I had never done a mold this way before. She covered the head in clay. Made a plaster mold and then filled in where the clay used to be with rubber.

HERE's JOHNNY! The head going into the plaster mold one last time before adding the rubber.

Head is strapped down and rubber is being poured

Another Angle. Way to go Anna!!! From here I have to wait 12 hours for the rubber to cure.
Then I can cut it open and start pouring my wax heads. More progress photos to follow.

New Website and Aluminum Pour!!

I got a new website on sale from GoDaddy this week. I am still updating it. None of the text or photos are on there yet. I need to find my artist statement and I need to upload my nicer finished photographs to it but it is nice to have a regular professional website to send people to.

All of my updates and progress will still go on regularly here. The website is more for finished pieces etc. But go ahead and check it out if you want to! Http://MehuArt.com




In other news.... (:P)

We did the aluminum pour today!!!!!! It was pretty fun and it turned out nice which is good. I was worried because my ceramic shell had some cracking but everything worked out fine.

Burning out wax and heating ceramic shell.

My Professor adding aluminum to the crucible

Hot now

Pouring the left over aluminum into ingots

pouring it into the ceramic shell. Sand all around it.

FIRE!

Ingots

Aluminum in shell. Still hot

Close up after breaking some of the shell off.

Breaking the shell off