Progress

I’ve now worked with Altraform (second item) on a couple projects, so I can give an opinion on it. I’ve also gotten a couple questions about it, so here are your answers Gina and Rich (aka *).

Pros:
- The white color makes it easy to clean off clay.
- It heats up quickly and then you have a nice couple minutes where it’s flexible and sticky enough to be formed. After that period of time is over, it cools down pretty quickly so you can pop the mask off and move onto the next one without much of a delay.
- It sticks to itself very well.
- It seems to have alot of the properties that I loved about Fabricform (ie. light-weight, flexible, takes forms relatively easily, can be cut with scissors/x-acto knives, can be sewn into, painted on… etc.).

Cons:
- You can’t use boiling water to heat it up. Or you can, but it won’t stick to itself if it’s wet. Dry heat only, so it takes longer to heat up the general piece you’re trying to form. After you get the basic shape of the mask, you can do spot work very quickly.
- It sticks to other things, like hands and tools. Getting something very hot stuck to your fingers is always fun, so I use tools more often than I did with Fabricform. When I’m using a tool to burnish or coax it into shape I make sure the tool is wet and that solves the stickiness problem.
- Since it doesn’t stick to wet things, I have a harder time getting the basic shape to form around the clay. It’s easier if I can get the Altraform to stick to itself while encircling the clay and then working on the details. (Here’s another pro… since it doesn’t stick to wet things, there’s less clay to clean off later.)

All in all, it works fine for smaller projects like face masks, but for larger projects it requires more patience. I’ll need to play around with new ways to heat it up other than just using my heat gun, because that gets awfully tedious and a bit frustrating when working with a 2′ x 3′ sheet that somehow needs to be draped over a complex shape.

Sad news. Douglas and Sturgess, Inc. just told me that Fabricform is no longer made. *sigh* My favorite mask material…

Oh well, time to play “move with the times” again. The (very nice) lady who helped me over the phone recommended Altraform as the material most similar to Fabricform. We’ll see how it works out.

Or is it “Moulds”? Whatever…

I’m ashamed to admit it, but plaster and I do not get along.

My molds have never been good. They’ve achieved their purpose, but oh they are ugly and awkward. My last sculpture professor informed us (with tongue fully in cheek) that, “A smooth mold is a happy mold.” My molds must be the most miserable beings/structures around.

When it comes to smaller molds, I can deal. I can build a clay structure to contain the plaster as it dries and the particular quirks of this material are in a small enough space for me to feel as if I have some say in the outcome. But recently, for the stress/boss vignette, I’ve had to construct a mold that is not flat, easily containable, nor square.

Ah yes… the aspect of mold-making that they skim over in most information packets/books/web-pages… The construction of the structure that will contain the liquid plaster. How to create such a thing if you don’t have a convenient container already or if you’re contemplating something more complicated than a flat, square, two-part mold.

I’ve never really had much instruction in this aspect of sculpture. So much of what I know is through trial and error… and error and error and more error.

I guess there are more errors for me to make before I can do this competently. So I’ll get to it. Onward to errors!