Sculpture:

How To

The Story:

Lately I have been trying sculpture.. It all happened quite by accident.. I sat down one lonely Saturday night and made a sculpture of a gargoyle I know and when it was done I liked it so much I wanted to send it off to him -- but I also wanted to keep it. Eat your cake and have it too, Loopy? Dumb werewolf...

So I decided to make a mold and cast it in plaster of paris.. With great difficulty, I secured the methods and the means and I made a rubber mold of the gargoyle. I was rather rushed because I was supposed to meet the gargoyle in Toronto and it was barely a week away, but even though I managed to make the cast, he cancelled at the last minute :(.

The Method/gargoyle:

I recommend to anyone about to attempt this to play with a dummy first, I never did this.. I experimented with my masters always and its cost me.. a lot:

I made the master in self-hardening clay. It's hard to find a decent material to mold in. I can't attack a lump of clay with a putty knife and carve out a shape, I need to build the model the way I draw.. I make each arm, each leg in my hands, forming the muscles and the joints, and then stick it on. But plasticine rips itself apart of its own weight (what a heart-breaker that is, let me tell you.) and self-hardening clay becomes so brittle it splits itself apart. The dragon (see below) had a wire armature to support his weight and he is still glued all together.. *sigh*
Splitting the master: Sculpture all boils down to a glorified bubble.. You cannot cast something with loops and holes unless you have the mold PRECISELY placed on a plane with those holes.. So if your master is complex, you might want to split it up and glue it back together when it's cast, in several parts. I split off the gargoyle's wings. Of course his leg and toes usually snap off as well, but I didn't plan that part.

. This is the part where you have to be clever and know how liquid flows.

I surrounded the master in varnish, and Smooth-On™ mold-release spray. If you're in montreal, you can get these at Sial, a big art warehouse, 335-2419 I think.. but you can usually contact the manufacturers.. Smooth-On is at 908-647-5800. I have a couple of others you can contact that I don't have at my fingertips right now.
I poured/painted mold compound over him. I used PVM-1021 on the gargoyle, thinking it was brushable, when in fact it was a pourable, which let to a big mess.. but I did get a decent mold out of it. Then I cast in PMC plastic (Aluminite) and it just about tore the mold apart :(.. damaged it very badly.
When the mold was dry, I put a plaster two-part mold around each part. This was done with plain-old Plaster of Paris, by soaking household roll in it. The trick here is to draw a line on the mold where you plan to make the split, and roll up a sheet to form an obvious "split" before covering the rest of the mold in wet strips.. It's also a good idea to make each half of the mold separately, using mold-soap or vaseline to make sure the join-edge is well lubed.
When the plaster is dry, break it apart. You then cut a neat line through to your master through the rubber and carefully remove it from the master. The hardest part of this is NOT damaging the original at this point. You really have to take great care in making the rubber such that it can be removed easily.. and I haven't mastered that yet. After this little web-exposition is typed I still have to remove 10 lbs. of rotten goo from around the dragon :(.
On your left you see the gargoyle's molds, nestled in their drum, strapped up and snug in their plaster shells, ready for the life-giving plaster..
Remove your master, replace the rubber in the plaster, tie the plaster together and you're ready to cast. The rubber mold should have been made with a huge hole in the bottom so that you can pour easily.. but if you set it down on paper and poured over it as I did, that should be dead easy.
You mix plaster of paris into water to cast. You can "slip" a great deal of PofP into water, and it seems the final casting is more or less dense depending on how much you do. Some of them are like biscuit-wafers (and I tell you, seeing the same figure, repeated exactly like a xerox, sititng side by side.. is real wierd!) It recommends 1:1, but I often use more than that. This creates a nice, pourable mixture. Typically, the PofP will "settle" a bit, leaving a watery space on top.. If you sit and watch a while, your PofP will grow a little thicker, and you can top it up with this.. Don't be afraid of leaving extra on top.. PofP is very brittle and can be broken away without trouble (not so PVC!)
If you use PVC plastic, be careful-- this is an exothermic reaction and will get very hot. The gargoyles' wings were no trouble, but the body got so hot it bonded itself to the mold that it tore it when it came away! It would have been fine to have a thin coating of plastic to do this job, but there was no way to pour it so.. It makes a liquid that SETS in 15 seconds.. Not long enough for you to make a "coating.." but it's something I'm still working on.

The poor master now is so damaged, pocked, smashed that I can't make another mold. He's been cooked, sprayed, boiled, repaired, glued.. now he's more of a grotesque than a gargoyle. I tried to make a mold out of wax, and then had to cook it off, and when I cooked it off it just about cooked the gargoyle to bits and his enamel covering bubbled up. I tried everything :(.. I even tried to make a mold out of plaster of paris.. sigh.

The Method/Dragon

With the dragon I was sure not to repeat any of the mistakes I made with the gargoyle.. No, I went off and made a whole slew of new ones! :)

I made the master this time with molding in mind.. I carefully placed an armature for strength in the master, and then out-foxed myself again by "cleverly" smoothing the rough parts and joins of the dragon with a wet paintbrush, which resulted in it ripping itself to pieces when it dried. At one point, he toppled over and broke his head off.. It's thankless work, believe me.
The only smart thing I did was to place small wires in the dragon's body for the wings, and wires in the wings to hold them up against the weight of the clay, because when it was done, I was able to remove the wires from the dragon's body and slide the wings into place on those pegs.. It's something I'll aim for in future, you might want to too.
I also made a proper pedastal for this wee beastie, so he could stand up.. which had to be a separate piece, but I made it while sitting watching Godzilla vs. Megalon, so I was happy.
First, I used the true brushable compound, PVM-724.. but if you don't have a digital scale all you really get of this expensive mold compound is a gooey mess you can't get off anything. At present I am trying to rescue my dragon from it, and the pieces I do rescue are all gooey and nasty.. :(
If I ever get this one to work, a. It'll be a miracle, b. You can buy it, and c. I'll let you know how I did it.

Update

I did finally manage the dragon.. and he made a beautiful four-part mold.. I tried a paint on mold and I crushed his ankles and had to surgically reconstruct them, but I did manage to make five molds that make the dragon.. His body, his tail, his two wings and his base, and then I glue them all together and he's done.. but it's a complicated one, but pretty when he's done.

The Method/Werewolf:

The werewolf I made with a foil skeleton (his back and thighs) and then sculpted the rest with roma modelling clay.. The original did not survive the molding process, but might be reparable.. The mold was three-angled, and VERY complicated.. and very hard to mold, but the final product is quite nice. The dragon still rides the top, though.. in terms of effort vs. product quality.

On your extreme right you see the back part of the werewolf mold. If you look closely you can see the hair-detail within the mold. On your immediate right is a basic casting of the werewolf, assembled.

Original Materials:

Finding a good material for originals is a bitch.. sorry, but that's the best word. I do finally have the answer to this one, though:

Plasticine: Plasticine is a material of choice.. Soft and workable it allows you to sculpt easily and quickly, especially the modular, part-by-part way I sculpt things. However, plasticine is unsuitable for original work because it is too heavy, and larger pieces will rip themselves apart of their own weight. You can use armatures of wire or better yet scrunched-up aluminum foil, but they force you to plan out a basic shape beforehand, limiting your sculpting freedom.
Modelling Clay: Modelling clay is even softer than plasticine.. and you can get some interesting effects with that.. but it's a bit too smudgy for me, and has the same problem.
SHC: Self-Hardening Clay seemed a life-saver.. as workable as plasticine and the fact that it dissolves in water allows one to smooth it over with a wet paintbrush, eliminating all those nics and fingerprints and joins. However, SHC rips itself apart as it dries and hardens, making cracks that will show up in every mold, so this hurts.
Crayola Mold Magic: This puffy styrofoam stuff air-dries, and has the workability of plasticine, so I bought a gross, but, when it hardens it's like styrofoam, and it rips itself apart when you free it from the mold, thus you always lose your original, so this one scores a nice-but-not-perfect.
FIMO: This much-vaunted PVC Clay is supposed to be the greatest thing on Earth. It aint. It is tough and rubbery and impossible to sculpt.. maybe it's great for caning and making jewelry but not for sculpture.. Plus which, after it does soften.. with water and heat.. it stays soft.. so if you make an arm.. that arm will continue to ooze and sag long after you've put it in place.. which plasticine does not. FIMO also got on my bad side by sagging in the oven, unexpectedly.. making the final products look crummy. Also, FIMO doesn't allow you to smudge and seal over joins.. they always show.. so that's no good to me.
Sculpey: At last, the success-story and my recommendation. This little darling has the exact same workability as plasticine, BUT it is a cookable PVC clay like FIMO. I haven't yet made an original in it.. but I have done test-cooks and it cooks up nice n hard. Unfortunately it isn't sticky enough to refit with (see below) but hey, nobody's perfect. This stuff should be hard enough to make decent masters from that survive the molding process!

Refit:

Lately (August) I've been having a ball doing refits.. that is, after casting a standard dragon mold.. refitting the mold by adding parts and strategically painting to create variations on a theme. Check out the Gallery to see what I've managed to do with the basic dragon. I do this by using SHC to mold new parts, then when they dry I glue them onto the mold and paint. The fun part is that the SHC is dark grey to the original plaster's white.. so the mold looks very original, but when you paint voila.. you have a new model. I understand serious modellers do this with kits.. I'm just following that tradition.

Repainting:

It is also a lot of fun repainting the casts in a variety of ways.. This being a sort of art unto itself. Werewolves, Gargoyles and Dragons are all so varied I could cast 100 of each and repaint each one a different way. I am looking forward to this.. making black, white, brown, blonde, russet wererwolves, and green, gold, red, yellow, scaly gargoyles and gold, silver, scaly, red, green, blue dragons. :)

Costuming:

I don't want to reveal what my costume is going to be this year, but pictured here is the full-head marotte that absolutely freaked out my dogs when I asked, "Does this look like me?" I intend to make a sculpture of a head from this original and cast from that sculpture a mask in rubber. Wish me luck!

Oh yes, in case you hadn't guessed.. It is indeed my intention to litter the entire world with these little critters.. Why? Because I'm sick of seeing that one, same gargoyle mold EVERYWHERE!

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