Tonight I am supposed to be molding up the wax goat head I've been working on. I've yet to add the texture to it and have managed to dig out a small selection of old and broken hacksaw blades to use. I have no idea if this technique will work. It's the only thing I could think of to use. H.P and his business partner in the art studio shouted me the fee to go to the class with them. It's quite a learning curve, especially the choice of glass colour. Some actually turn a whole different colour under different light sources.
I ended up choosing Apricot which I think will go a deep orangey brown. The denseness of the head will deepen the colour and the ears, being thinner will be lighter. The gut wrenching part is after it's molded (covered with a plaster and silica mix) the wax is then melted out so I won't have the wax sculpture any more and I have to hope the glass side of things comes out right. I'm going to take some photos just in case. It's hard when you've spent hours creating something and then have to melt it down to get the final result. Eeek!
I used Hanukkah as the model. I took heaps and heaps of photos from all different angles. Not easy when your model won't keep still and insists on having a good, up close and personal, examination of the camera lens... then her friends join in, mostly Cricket. I got a couple of wonderful blurry shots of her nostrils and her eye.
Although frustrating and sometimes infuriating it's hard not to laugh at them as the shutter goes 'click' and you see in the LCD screen just what it is you captured. Oooooh I love them to bits!
It's been a long night. The head was molded up with a resevour (sp?) of clay and then molded over with a mix of silica, plaster and grog
( a clay mix, not the stuff you drink). She was then levelled and left to set. This didn't take long. The clay was removed and the whole thing turned up the other way so steam hoses could melt the wax out. Once the wax was gone.... well it turned out it wasn't all gone, she had wax in her ears and we each took turns at picking it out. A very fiddley business, hot water was poured in, poured out, cold water in, cold water out. We had to do this several times to make sure all the wax was out and clay removed etc. Finally the glass frit was weighed out and placed into the cavity the wax left.
The tutor is going to start firing bits on Sunday so maybe she will be ready to come out of her mold next Thursday.
I've been like a cat on a hot tin roof all night. Melting the wax out is nerve wracking!!!! All that sculpting dribbling out into a pan of water!!!! The tutor decided it would be a good idea to put another layer of the plaster mix mold on just to make sure the cast was strong enough to support 3.4 something Kg's of molten glass.
I need to go to bed!!! My nerves are frazzled!
I'll get the photos posted when Kim gets a moment to do it for me.
Sorry, I will as soon as Kim gets a moment. She's working from the moment she gets out of bed until she's too tired to work any more.
I'll see how we go tomorrow. I don't even know if the photos turned out ok yet.
Thanks Cate. If it made it into the first lot to go into the kiln, it would have gone in yesterday. I won't know until Thursday if it went in or not and if it did... I have a lot of plaster to pick off before I can see the finished product. It's a long wait.
Hanukkah is probably going home in a couple of weeks, maybe less.
Fox Song will be going with her. I shall miss them both, but not Songs escaping and breaking chains. [}] At least he's a sweetie and no bother to handle at all. Typical teenage lad with only two things on his mind. Does and food.
Oh bother! I got a call from H.P on Thursday afternoon to say the work hadn't come out of the kiln so there was no point in going into class. It has to cool down very slowly or the glass will crack. I have to wait another week now. Then it will be a slow and steady 'picking' game to get the plaster cast off without breaking the glass. I shall take big deep breaths and be very anal about this last task. I know me of old and if I get stuck into it with too much vigour, I could mess it up, so, in the words of Margaret Rutherford in the 'Miss Marple' series, "Slowly, slowly catchy monkey".
I might just get myself some of those nylon brillo scratchy pot scrubbers which hopefully will clean off any residue plaster without scratching the glass... and a dental pick.... and a hard toothbrush..... As for getting the cast off.... oo err....
She looks great!
I managed to get myself a tiny cut into the bargain and according to the tutor, it usually happens with each piece so you kind of get a momento from it. (sorry too tired to think of the words, went to fieldays today, up wayyy too early and home later than I thought)
She's quite 'orangey' in some lights, in fact, in the lounge she looks like an orange flavoured jube.
I'll get some photos up as soon as I can. The colour is quite difficult to photograph.
I still need to do some work on her, picking out flecks of plaster and a bit of 'fine tuning'. I had to use a thingy... um... like a dentists drill with a diamond head grindy point to remove some unexpected 'earings' that had formed from air bubbles and fix up a few 'warts' then texture up the area.
The real madam goes home on Monday. I sure am going to miss her but not half as much as Cricket will. Those two are thick as thieves and twice as crafty.
I'm off to bed... again.... I had a couple of hours (or maybe more) sleep not long after seeing to all the animals when we got home. It was go to bed or fall down.
]
] At least he's a sweetie and no bother to handle at all. Typical teenage lad with only two things on his mind. Does and food.