Casting Plaster

My husband and I are a bit odd. One of the ways we express our love is to work on projects together, because we find that the interplay of our skills and intellects very satisfying.

So for Valentine's day we got up early in the morning and started get ready to cast the plaster for the mask molds. We decided to make a very simple copy of one of the life masks first so that I would have a male and female head to work on when I have to give the loaner ones I am using back to my friend. Then we had to make a hardware store run for buckets to mix the plaster in. So eventually we got back and painted the masks with mold release and got the head we were going to cast set up.

Jim found some boards in the garage which were perfect to use as a base for the head and then we decided to cut the bottom out of an old plastic storage bin and use it to contain the plaster.

We got a lot of good information from the tutorials at Goblin art available here. We mixed up the plaster using the proportions in the tutorial and pored it on the first basic head with this result.

I purchased Hydrocal White by mistake instead of Hydrostone at Armadillo Clay down on east forth street. Hydrostone is much harder and makes a mold less prone to wear and tear. However I think it will be fine for this project and I will simply by the correct stuff for next time. We were able to separate fairly easily. The mold release works very well on the plaster and the clay does not stick at all. However we did have a problem with an undercut piece in the nose and ended up breaking off the tip of the nose in the positive life cast we were working from. However I think it will be all right because we have filed down the problem in the negative mold and we will simply get the right casting material and make a positive.

Working hard we were able to cast one of the clay masks I made which came out beautifully. We also got the third one ready to cast on sunday and then I cleaned up the house of all the project stuff so that we could have a nice evening and dinner at home with some time together.

It was a really fun, creative Valentines day for both of us.