Casting a Batman Mask

So this week I started something very scary.  If you haven't guessed by now I'm casting my own latex batman mask.  It's a mix of several versions.  It most closely resembles the Batman: Dead End mask I suppose.  As we know latex is usually cast in a plaster mold.  I'm not a fan of plaster molds.  They tend to lock up and do other awful things.  I also don't really have the proper setup to be working on this, but here I go.  First I covered the mouth and eyes to remove undercuts.

Next I put up a clay wall at my parting line

Reinforced.... it fell down 3 times while I was putting plaster one.... not great.

Plaster and burlap.  Removed the wall.  Surprisingly clean for the most part, but there will be a lot of cleanup later.  The cheap water clay I used for the wall was very tacky. It also turned out to be a very wobbly parting line.

tah daaahh....

Next week I hope I will have something more interesting for you.

Dreams and Little Terrors

 

I've had quite a few little ideas running around my brain lately, so I thought I'd jot them down.  These are some sketches of little wooden figures that resemble those weird wooden mannequins (yep, I had to spell check that one)  Just a thought.

Sketch

sucker.

I actually had a dream about this drawing.  I didn't quite get it down though.  I was at an art show of my own work and I saw it from across the room.

Feet in the Clouds

This was a fun week.  I made some stencil T-shirts and finished sculpting the feet on my guy.  It was Christina's birthday, so I decided to make T-shirts for our little family.  But first, some feet:

Basic Shape

Articulating the knuckles

Upside-down toenail sculpting

Not quite done, but good enough

Attached hands and feet

Stencil cut out of acetate

Taped to a screen

Prepped shirts with cardboard underneath

Always protection

Lay the fabric ink

Gently load the screen

Do a hard pull the other direction (not shown because both hands were occupied)

Bob Ross.

And that's how you do a fast screen printed shirt.

How to Sculpt Tiny Hands (and Batman)

So I can sculpt torsos all day long, but hands and feet take forever.  So I thought I'd dedicate a post to hand sculpting.  There's also a sneak peak at my halloween costume and some rad drawings  below.  

I start by making a very basic wire armature for my hand that was proportionate to my figure.

Then I figure out the positioning of the fingers and start adding clay and roughing out wrinkles and bones.

75% of the way there, starting to add veins.

Full Detailing

Give me five

I'm sculpting the mask, not that I deserve, but the mask I needed

Maya and I go on dates at Fajitas and Ritas because they have paper table cloths.  She drew our family. Here is the picture she drew of mommy.

Self-portrait (possibly as a dinosaur)

And me... Giant head.  Tiny body.  Not bad for a 2.5yr old.

Getting a new phone next month.  Hopefully the picture quality will increase.

Next week I'll post about feet!

How to Sculpt a Man with No Head

 I'll just jump right into the how to.  I always start by making my clay opaque (super sculpey is inherently translucent) SO I mix in some other colors so that I can see the flaws in the sculpt more easily.  In this case, I had some yellow lying around.

Next I make a basic armature skeleton marking major joints

then I wrap that in more wire so that the clay or aluminum foil doesn't slide off. . .

I really recommend working on your ipad. It adds a touch of class.

I usually wrap in aluminum foil so that I don't have to go too thick with the clay.  if you go more than 3/8ths of an inch on either side of the armature you might run into some cracking issues

clay

layout of basic muscle groupings

No hands or feet yet, but we're almost there.

No head either... but this guy doesn't get a head.

Next week, I'll try to finish this guy's sculpt.

The Absolute Dumbest Way to Duplicate Your Head

 So, this week I wanted to make a cast of my head... I don't have money or resources so I went about it very stupidly, but it worked.  So, for some time now I've had a rapid prototype of  my face lying around.  I made it a few years back with the help of people more skilled than I.  I eyeballed the scale for the printout so it ended up being about 4% larger than my already massive face.  Fortunately the materials I'll be casting in tend to shrink around 3% so it all works out.  Anyway here's what I did next:

Took pictures of myself from the front and side with a measuring tape in front and scaled the images in illustrator.  I created a grid, traced the silhouettes with the pen tool and printed them out.

I transferred them to mdf I had laying around and cut that out with the scroll saw.

I slotted them to make them 3-D

 I cut out where the existing face should go

inside or outside?

Filling in the back of the head

Probably weighs less than my real head.

TGIF (thank god it's fall)

We bought a lamp for maya and painted it orange

Now it matches the Marco Rosichelli print we have on her wall and the cloud I made for her.

Next week:

 I show you how to sculpt a figure out of polymer clay.