More experiments with flexible materials!

Flushed with the success of my lightweight Barry O'farrell caricature (2 posts ago), I cast a foam version from a flexible mould in silicon rubber that I made some time ago.  The silicon I used was Pinkysil from Barnes, amazing stuff but very expensive! Partially because of the cost of the silicon, this head is much smaller than life size. However another other reason for the smaller size is that Pinkysil, being  an addition-curing silicon, cannot be used directly with water based clay so I was using a form of plasticine to make the model and was limited by the amount that I had, as modelling plasticine, like silicon rubber, is quite expensive although it is reusable. Nothing about this flexible modelling business is cheap:(   You can get in again, from Barnes.  I was lucky however, and was given a present of a large chunk of pre used stuff (I like to  think that it may have been part of an ANZAC figure in its previous life! Thanks Alan!).

A word of warning, cheap plasticine very often gives off sulphur vapour which can prevent the silicon from curing. I found this out to my cost, fortunately with a very small mould, ending up, not with a firm flexible mould but a sticky pink mess:(  So, if in doubt, test on a small piece!

Previously I had been using this mould to make casts in plaster, not light I know but very cheap. I have been using these to test out different finishes and patinas. This is my favourite finish to date. I used Porter's Paint's Liquid Iron and instant rust to get the look of old metal.

 

And here he is in flexible foam!

 

 

Because silicon rubber is non absorbent, it cannot be used to slip cast a latex skin so I created the foam core first by pouring the foam directly into the mould and, once it had cured (about an hour), removed it from the mould and created the latex skin by dipping it in latex. Finally it was painted in a 50 : 50 acrylic paint / latex mix as before.