Practicing with Molds and Casts

A few critical processes needed to be practiced before John and I could take the next step towards casting a body.  To make a full-body cast, we would have to make multi-part molds.  The one above was a casual experiment with making a very simple mold of a sphere.  Plaster was poured into a cup, a billiard ball was inserted to its midpoint, and the whole thing left to set.  Once dry, some Mold Soap was brushed onto the plaster surface, such that a second pour of plaster would not stick to the first pour.  A little column of clay was used to form a spout for casting.  When all was done, we had our two-part mold.

This, however, was not our first all-plaster, two-part mold.  One evening John was determined to make a mold out of pure plaster.  No alginate or modern conveniences.  He was going to work a mold using the same tools that sculptors used over 100 years ago.  He poured plaster over the back of his hand and worked it until set.  Then after an application of mold release, he coated the palm of his hand with fresh plaster.  Throughout we were keying the two pieces so that they would fit together, and reinforcing the plaster with strips of burlap.  The final result wasn't the prettiest thing, but it held high levels of detail and could be cast.  The plaster hand cast below suffered a little from the sloppiness of the mold, but it taught us a lot about working with plaster.

One amusing note about this cast was how the plaster mold tore several of his hairs off the back of his hand.  They stuck out from the mold, and when cast with plaster were transferred to the finished piece.  Funny to see a cast of John's hand with actual hair "growing" out of the sculpture.  We are definitely going to have to figure out how to work with hair, so that our models don't have to be perfectly shorn.

And finally (as we cleaned up) I quickly grabbed a wet paper towel and made a quick paper cast (see below).  It holds its form, but the cast is weak because the paper in the towels is made up of short fibers.  But with properly prepared paper pulp, we can cast paper into our molds as well.  I look forward to making some life-size paper casts in the near future.