Urban fantasy mould making

The Canberra glass works had lots of school groups doing the tour today. Always fun to see such enthusiasm from the young ones, and amusing the attitude of indifference from the teens.

Amongst chatting to tours I made another piece and then made moulds. I love seeing the positive and negative space together.

Dryad mould ready for casting

The Dryad piece is ready for glass casting.

Forest light project

I have this image in my head, that is where I'm trying to get to with this light.

from my sketch book, the one on the left

I haven't done this before, so I'm just going with it. There are elements that I have done before but not quite put together like this. The collage below shows progress over the last 3 days.

forest light stage 1 montage

Dryads

Today I also worked on my 'Dryads' project for the 'Tree' exhibition at Canberra Glassworks in March. I started because I needed to distract myself from waiting for wax for the forest light (melting or cooling, it always takes too long.)

Similar to some of my other work, but this time I'm combining scale and sandblast imagery. I'm thinking about gold leafing the Dryads but i'm not sure, or trying another colour other than black. Only one way to find out!

Tree mastermould panel

Second stage, make a plaster negative. Given that this is a shallow cast I need to give it more time to set and strengthen. I'll remove the plaster and cast in wax tomorrow.

Woodland tankard in wax

Finally I made a successful mould from the opshop metal tankard (see below), a 3 part plaster affair ended up being easier than rubber or silicon.
Here is the tankard with a modified (strengthened) handle plus oak leaves and acorns ready for the next step of lost wax mould making.

wax woodland tankard

3 part plaster mould in progress

Polar bears...are not antarctic animals

Whilst I was at the Caberra Glassworks today, I made some more "Antartic animals" for a diorama of glass beasties to entice young persons to take the Glassworks' "Antartic animals" workshop....
Luckily as well as a polar bear, I made some seals and penguins...

25 key moulds in Kiln 18-19

Key moulds all set up in kiln 18 and 19, coming out on Tuesday

Making a mess and 26 key moulds

Whilst I have plenty of process shots (see blog) I rarely have any with me in them. So today whilst making a mess in the mould room I set up the ipad to capture an image every minute.

keys in the kiln

Stuffed these in the kiln this morning before driving to Sydney, fingers crossed...

key to the bloody chamber

Here's a work in progress...based on the tales of Bluebeard and Fitcher's bird.

WIP. wax and watercolour

Keys going in

13 keys and a few frames ready to mould up

Key from America

The cast iron key I was waiting from the States arrived in the post this morning...

Rapunzel or Persinette

the clay positive

This smallish piece was created while thinking about one of my favourite Australian author's, Kate Forsyth and her fabulous book 'Bitter greens'. This is Rapunzel's tower simplified (without getting too phallic - hence the shortness) the detail on the right is a quick line drawing of some parsley leaves. Rapunzel is also Persinette or Petrosinella hence the parsley.

quick sketch using paper 53

Mould making

feeders

forgot the chopped  fibre glass, so I popped in a coffee cup to give some flexibility, not my best thought but it will do I hope!

sprues

Second layer I think, I tried dipping for the first layer. Works well, but you do need a lot of plaster silica mix. So either have lots of objects to dip, or make some 'poured' moulds ready.

Selkie project

This is the second seal head that I have attempted, improvement I think. One flipper also complete. The flipper I decided to make the plaster silica cast right away, but the head took longer so I made a clay bonnet (see pic...and that is not a technical term) and tried out a silicon pouring mixture.

arrrgh

So, I was being hopeful and a tad ambitious to get both Ravens, invested and steamed and in the kiln today. It took most of the morning to set them up with sprues and supports..the glass components are heavy as you can imagine. Beaks, legs and tails fell off at varying times. All up we got one raven invested. I'm going to miss my first theory class tomorrow (Sorry Danie) in hope to get moving on this..and getting to college early..thanks Deb for the lift.

Huginn and Muninn in plaster, silica, chopped fibre sheet and grog!