Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Ugly Uncles: Cast Plaster Sculptures!

So here's what I've been doing for the last three weeks: casting a series of sculptures!

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I had never done this before, but basically I made an original out of plasticine, covered it in rubber and plaster, cut it open strategically to form a mold, and then cast these guys in plaster with that mold. Here are some little maquettes I was doing in the planning stage:

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I chose this guy:
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And made him bigger! Such intense concentration...

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Here he is almost done; just needs some smoothing out and his legs fixed a bit.

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After he is cast, he becomes the four ugly uncles pictured above! Oh, and the four uncles have a fifth sibling. This fifth uncle was my test cast, and he didn't fit in well with the others. So I took him outside and left him in a gargoyley perch downtown for pedestrians to appreciate:

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Whew! Oh, and as for what happens to the plasticine after the mold is made: it tends to come out pretty trashed. I combined my leftover plasticine with somebody else to make this abomination afterwards:

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Think of that when you try to sleep tonight.