The final showdown!

So this was it. After 6 weeks hard graft, no other way to describe it, this is what i had worked up to.... My model Jody before hand, at 9am wednesday morning:

during the transformatory exercise:

and by 5pm with full Miss Haversham esque costume and false teeth

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and so it goes...

so now the foam latex is fluffed into the negative mould, the positive placed on top, squeezed together and bolted, then cooked in the oven over night....the moulds are then teased appart to reveal...tadah! our piece:

whilst this is going on, we are also filling out head moulds with liquid latex, which we coloured with acrylic paints the latex is swiched about inside the head mould to ensure even coverage, and no air bubbles

then left to dry overnight and.... DISASTER!!!

after another failed attempt, which lead to an interesting birthday present for my flatmate, i got a good one. This one was then painstakingly painted over 3 hours, and then hair punched for another hour and a half... i should also add that the other 7 head pieces were taken home and also painted one cold friday night from 6pm till 2am whilst drinking chai tea from a jam jar and listening to radio 4 plays...

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and so the story continues....

the wax sculpt then has to be cut into sections so that the separate areas can be removed:

once the cuts have been made, the cast is soaked in water to release them from the life cast (core):

once all pieces have been removed, mould making madness then begins!......creating positive and negative fibre glass casts.... no pics as this bit is pretty tedious and not so pretty...imagine lots of fibre glass, clay, sweating swearing and breathing respirators.... moulds must then be sanded...at home, in the bath if you like....

the wax clay sections are now melted and fixed onto the new positive moulds and more texturiseing takes place:

now these moulds are fibre glassed to create the new negative part of the mould (are you still following?...) once they have been fibre glassed, holes are drilled so that the pos and neg moulds can be fitted back together, and the space between the two is what makes our piece/mask...

the casts are then eased appart, lots of cut hands, achy fingers and gritted teeth as this happens....

the wax is peeled out and the cast cleaned

now we have the negative part to match the positive all 7 of them!

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