Creating a great mould is one of the most important steps in the process of this sculpture. Without a good mould the sculpture will not be shown its full potential and in order to create the very best I had planned out my mould well with the help and advise of the technicians.
Head
The head was fairly simple to do as it was just a two part fibreglass jacket mould. Having never used fibreglass before I was quite careful in understanding the process, I created a metal shim around the centre of the head as this is a seam line you will not be able to see. After cleaning out the mould thoroughly I glued the eyeballs in and prepared to mix the plat sil 10 silicone with the silicone pigments and flocking. I had watched a few videos on this process and it was still scary to do. After brushing in the detail to catch all the detail I added another layer and cotton wool on top as so to hold together better with the expanding foam that had gone in next.
The final cast of the head went relatively well despite when the air got caught around the eyes and a few other small bits however its nothing that silicone cant fix.
Foot
The foot was my favourite mould to make so far, in my last project I had used the matric mould technique and now felt fully confident in my skills to do another. It ended up going really well, I had only had to slice one side of the silicone wich made for only one seam line which was virtually non existant.
Hands
The hands were very complicated to figure out how to mould as they needed to be able to be holding the bucket and so I had to make sure I didn’t distort anything in the process of removing the hands from the bucket as well as moulding.
I chose to do a two part mould with a fibreglass jacket which came to be 6 day process. This was a bit intimidating due to time however each step to the process only took maximum two hours (except from the fibreglass).
The moulding went okay however I realised I had made a mistake which would not be easily fixed, I did the fibreglass layers without removing a section of wet clay which in the end made I so the jacket and the silicone had two separate seam lines. Adapting my pouring method and way of putting the mould together as it was quite stiff, allowed me to pour fast cast inside without needing to paste it in, instead a bit of sloshing around ensured that I got a full cast with no bubbles.
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