Saturday 5 May 2012

22nd ENTRY - Madame Fontaine, a case study

I was less worried about Madame Fontaine. Her character was strong, but she did not need to seduce the viewer with her beauty. Hence I think I enjoyed creating her and struggled less than with the other three sculptures.
I loosely based her on two paternal grandmothers, mine and Liz's dad's, and among others, a picture of Audrey Hepburn.
Her armature was simpler. I only used recycled parts from Solo Duets, and planned to use wire in the arms, cutting costs substantially.
Later, after scrapping the original Anna armature, I gave M. Fontaine proper arms.

This sculpture was the first to be finished. I completed her in Cardiff, and ordered a large tub of silicone for moulds.
I think the first lesson here was not to ask advice for the "easiest" way to do something. The "easiest" rubber mould to make is a Box Mould. This is also the most expensive, as it uses a ridiculous amount of silicone, particularly if you are me, having never done such a thing before.
Let it suffice to say that this first mould attempt was a failure.
I salvaged the wreckage, and refinished her in Assisi, where I attempted my second mould, this time in fiberglass resin. World War Z came along half way through the mould-making process, so one half was made in Umbria, and the other, months later in Surrey.
It was not a great mould at all, but usable.


Madame Fontaine


Above left: Anne Winter (my father's mother).    Above right: Mary Elizabeth Krause (Liz's father's grandmother)
























MOULD ONE

 I was going to not post these pictures. They are humiliating. 
If you can't get someone to show you how to do things, and you don't have much luck finding decent video tutorials online, make sure whoever you speak to on the phone is pretending to teach a foreign language goldfish. You might notice this picture above. When making a block mould, once the rubber is cured, to demoed, cut a in a zigzag line, so that it keys and closes again. Don't do what I did here, being draw a squiggly line down the half way point of the figure and expect to cut the mould along that line!
And don't make a block mould for a figure of these dimensions. These two strange wax blocks will not save enough on silicone to make them worth the trouble.


Because all that costly rubber you ordered, hoping to make three moulds with, won't be enough even for one!

But you can try to make it go far enough...

only to find that the mould is unusable.

Although it did pick up the detail.

This block mould lived in a Bristol storage for a while. Liz saved it from me throwing it in the bin months later, and it made its way down to Assisi in the car with my parents.

M. Fontaine escaped the block mould with some broken fingers, crushed ears, dislocated shoulders, but with nothing unfixable.


So she traveled with the others, still in wax form, to Assisi.

 Where the costume designer started thinking about colours and textures.



MOULD TWO

wrapped in a damp cloth, after a water based clay bed was built.


 Don't ask.

Months later in Surrey, outside London.



Months later in Lauder, Scottish Borders

First silicone test.

See Seventeenth Entry.


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