Julie Bishop imortalised for posterity:)

Taking a look at our new bunch of unlovely politicians, I decided that, apart from Tony, the ones who show the most promise as subjects for caricature are Julie Bishop and Clive Palmer (assuming he gets in on the Nth recount as seems likely). I'll leave labour until they decide who's who, for now anyway!

I decided to start with Julie Bishop by making a silicon mould similar to the one I made of Barry in the previous post. Here is the finished mould opened up slightly so you can see the thickness of the wall.

 

 

 I made it by encasing the model with an outer wall of plasticine to minimise the amount of silicon rubber required, pouring the silicon as a one piece mould and then cutting it up the back to release the model and subsequent casts. This is the easiest way of making a silicon mould although it is expensive in terms of the amount of rubber used as the walls have to be thicker than if they were  backed with a plaster mother mould which is the more conventional way silicon moulds are constructed. This technique requires an awful lot of work but it can be scaled up pretty much  infinitely whereas my technique can only be used for small moulds.

 

And here is the mould closed and strapped shut ready for the cast to be poured, the other way up of course!

 

 

And finally, here is my first take on Julie! 

 

 

 

This time I poured the foam directly into the mould but, instead of dipping it in latex to get a latex skin covering the foam like last time, I decided to try painting on the latex/acrylic paint mixture directly. Although successful to a degree, it wasn't nearly as successful as painting over a latex skin. Basically dipping the model in latex seems to fill up all the little surface craters in the foam in a way which brushing the stuff on doesn't. Since I don't have enough latex at home at the moment to dip the model, I might try brushing on a couple of coats of pure latex on the next attempt before attempting to colour it.

 

At least the most expensive part of the exercise, the silicon mould, has been successfully completed. Compared to the cost of that, the foam is comparatively cheap. Just over A$80 for 2.9 litres but it expands up to eight times that in volume. That's a lot of foam!

 

I was using  S-FOAM, again from Barnes,  which comes in different degrees of stiffness. S-FOAM 60, which I was using, is at the more flexible end of the spectrum so I think it is possible that the firmer varieties may have less surface craters. I have seen pieces cast in foam with much smoother surfaces than I am getting so I guess I'll just have to try it and see unless anyone out there knows the answer. If so, please don't hesitate to add a comment.