Hands and falling fingers

I was introduced to the material alginate and really wanted to work with it for some hand casts. I decided i was going to make one, add clay to it so it looked like talons then paint latex on to it. After doing this i planned on attaching the latex on to a part of my body so that it looked like it was coming out of my body or was attached. I got this idea from looking at wilder Mann.





I really liked my initial cast because the alginate gives you a really detailed cast. Unfortunately I had pressed me fingers into the bottom of the bowl so the tops of them came out flat. Despite this I find the first cast interesting because of the detail, you can even see my fingerprints. I also like the position of the hand and how it's curled up.

(Photo of curled up hand) 

I started changing the position of my fingers in the alginate because of my idea so that they were straights. However after I'd allowed the plaster to set and was taking the alginate off the fingers kept breaking off due to how fragile the plaster was. This happened 3 times before my final cast. 

(Photo of broken fingers)

For my final cast I took longer, a lot longer, to peel away the alginate. An hour later, I had my final cast ready to start building! Now to wait for the clay to arrive...

(Picture of the final cast)

Glitter and blue eyebrows

Casting eachother

We were asked to create some statue-like figures to be placed in part of the construction department. 

This was our first time casting large parts of eachothers body, and turned out to be a good team building exercise. 

We started casting eachother in positions linked to construction.

We also decided to have plain figures dotted around to make the others stand out.

I even gave it a go myself.

After some deliberation we chose to look more closely at our topic area, which is folk art. 

We decided to make some of the figures look like those from folk tales and old circus'.

The mask

After creating the plaster cast of my face i began to add all of the features i wanted my latex mask to have

I added thin eyebrows, bigger lips and over- exaggerated, more defined cheekbones. I also added clay to the bridge of the nose to make it straighter and more masculine.

I sketched a couple of ideas of what i wanted my mask to look like which were inspired by Wilder Mann.

I started adding latex to my base and waited for it to dry before adding multiple layers to thicken it.

Face casting

We were told last week that we'd be making our own latex masks and today we started the process. 

First step: creating a modrock base.

we had to first cover eachother faces with clingfilm so that we didnt have to endure the painful experience of having modrock stuck to our faces. i had the pleasure of sticking modrock to emma's face. It was quite fun although you had to work quickly to cover a large space.

put them all together and they looked like something out of a horror movie.

Step two: plaster

After the initial casts had set and we had placed modrock over the gaps in the noses, we poured a very thick ammount of plaster into them and shook them to make sure it got into every little bit.

This again turned out to look like something which belonged in a child's nightmare.

The next step once they are all dry is to add clay to the cast so that it can take form when they latex is applied.

I want to create something like this with glitter, lots and lots of glitter!

Folk art characters inspired makeup

I started off with my Jaremy Aiello's inspired fawn makeup from the film "The Chronicles of Narnia" which he worked on. 

I started with creating the 'eyebrows' of the fawn with eye shadows and eyeliners. I built up around this with cheek bones and contour around the face. The face came together when i added the liner on the eyes, rose and mouth and the white spots around the face

I created my own rendition of the 'Queen of hearts' from the work Richard Alonzo did on "Alice in Wonderland".

I drafted my idea first so i had some idea of what i was doing. I didn't do this for the fawn idea so i created it as i went. This made me a lot more organised the second time round.

I lined the face with black eyeliner as i wanted to black-out some parts of the face and create a new jaw bone. I kept the same eye colour but changed it for a smokey eye instead of a block colour.


I outlined the hearts on the side of my face with a white eyeliner pencil before going over it with a red eyeliner and face glitter. i outlined the hearts with black liner to emphasize their shape.