Sunday, December 18, 2011

Daphne, helping Don with mold work and more carving on the new work






Daphne is nearly finished but I am going to turn her so that she is facing south (she is now facing west). This will help me to finish up her right side since it faces north,it is always in the shadows, never getting sunlight. By turning her to the south I will be able to see both left and right sides of the sculpture in the same light. Also, she is elevated on six timbers to aid in work around the bottom of the piece. This has made it difficult to work on areas on the upper areas of the sculpture, particularly the leaves. Moving the sculpture closer to the ground will make it easier to finish these areas.


I am helping Don do the mold work on his tree of life sculpture. I will only touch on the steps of making a mold. He has posted a very in depth step by step on his blog http://restlessrocks.blogspot.com/ .


In the photo above,the leaf sections from the Tree of Life have been cut off and numbered. They are placed on little pedestals. They are then spray with a release agent.



Two layers of mold material are applied and then shims made of plastic sheet and sections of bubble sheet (which acts as register marks) are attached to the leaves with pins. The shims establish the part line of the mold.



Polyfiber is mixed with the mold material and is used to fill in the area between the shims and the leaves. As it is thick and sticky, it holds the shim to the sculpture and the pins can now be removed.



These are the leaves with 6 layers of mold material. They are now ready for the mother molds which will be made of plaster.


The tree, shorn of it's leaves will get it's mold next.
I spent some time working on the sculpture from the last post. I am removing stone from one side and ....
then the other. This piece is just for me, it's not a commission. Any ideas about what it is going to be?
What's this? A frost covered sunflower seed on the frost covered red truck. This years Christmas card.