Mold Making Instruction: Creating A Mold Off A Portion Of A Yellow Jacket Mascot Sculpture

I was fabricating a one-of-a-kind yellow jacket sculpture a couple of months ago when I decided that I wanted a mold for the head which I had spent many,many, many hours working on. Since time and money was tight for this project a full mold was out of the question but because I really liked how the head had turned out I figured that if another yellow jacket mascot was needed, my having a head mold of this one would put me way ahead on building another.So what I did was release the entire head and about two inches below where the head joined the body. I then applied the silicone rubber, detail coat first followed by a thickened paste which was smoothed out. I then applied the fiberglass for a two part mold for waxes, resins, or plaster.

Once the mold was cleaned up and all the bolts drilled and fastened, everything was broken down and pulled away from the original and put away for future use. Once I thoroughly cleaned the head area,I went back to finishing the mascot sculpture like before.

The final mascot sculpture can be seen above in my banner and at Snarlingcrow Studios website.

Look for complete project progression photos of this mascot sculpture at a later date.

Wall Sculpture Exercise ... Create & Destroy

I have to do this little creative sculpture technique every now and then to keep everything balanced. I create a wall sculpture (or any other type of sculpture) and then destroy it. The lesson supposed to teach me to learn to let go of my sculpted creations without getting too attached. This is something that I have heard certain sculptors discussing before in sculpture forums and this is one of the better actions to take to remedy that mindset. For this exercise I simply fastened a few 4" thick foam squares to my relief board with a general idea of what I wanted to create, which was, at a minimum, a larger than life male head and torso wall sculpture and see how far that I could get in two hours.

Here is the end result after two hours. Understand that I am leaving out a great deal of in-between working time but the majority of time spent was taking large slabs of sculpting clay and jamming it all around the foam squares as I 'fleshed out' my form.

I came back later that night and took this photo before I tore it down. I have to admit that I really wasn't pleased by the destruction but I know that it's a necessary evil that produces, I believe, better sculpted art works down the road.