By Kirkd The summer holidays have been and gone and its been a long while since my last post. Besides basting myself in suncream to try and keep my lilly white skin tone, I’ve also had a bit of a cough, spent most of my time watching the first three series of ‘Breaking Bad’ (I’m now suffering withdrawal symptoms while waiting for series 4 to come out on DVD next month) and I’ve spent very little time doing anything digital in my spare time.
As I spend my working hours on a computer I’ve been trying to get away from them a bit and I’ve been trying to get back into none-digital art forms. Yes I know i’ve been going mad on the sculpting over the last year but I’ve always felt my drawing skills are lacking and I recently went to a
meetup called Suffolk Sketchup which made me think more about my 2d skills and how they need to be tightened up a bit. I’m not expecting to jump into the 2d pit and work to become an illustrator, but I know it will help my designs when I come to sculpting. Also I see stuff by Rob (the guy who runs the comic shop in town) and get all envious of people who can draw like that.
In the meantime I recently picked up a fresh batch of easyflow (is it easyflow or easyflo?) from Mouldlife in Bury and bought some Aluminium powder at the same time, this gave rise to the next casting which i’ve been cleaning up for the last two nights.
Not so much chrome as a dull metal.
The first coat was:
150 – Part a easyflow
150 – Part b easlyflow
200 – Aluminium
100 – Powdered steel
(all measurements are to the cup lines on the measuring cups I’m using so its not based on weight)
The steel and aluminium was mixed before adding the easyflow and I used some steel to try and get a darker effect to the aluminium. The body was then backfilled with 2/3 of a 1 kilo pack of fibreglass resin from the chandlery with aluminium trihydrate, some steel powder and a couple of drops of black dye. (the steel and dye was to try and make sure the whiteness of the aluminium trihydrate doesn’t come through the thinner shell).
In total this was roughly around £40 – £50 worth of materials and came out ok. A few air bubbles here and there which I shouldn’t have had but I stupidly didn’t work the mould as much as I should have. I spent last night rubbing it down with black dye and wire wool and the final effect is a dark metal shine to it, almost like a dark pewter.
The next one will have less steel powder as I want to get a much more silver effect without the dulling down.