Image One: Practical Preparations

Hey and welcome back to my blog!

This blog is going to discuss practical preparations completed so far for image one.

The process for image one started with creating a half face life cast, making sure that the top of the head was casted, which can be seen in figure 1 (O'Connor, 2022. Life Cast).

An in depth walk through of life casting can be found by clicking the button below. This will take you to a previous blog written explaining the process.

Life Casting Blog

Once the cast had been made, this was filled with plaster and a core had been made. This was painted to the same colour of the sculpting clay that will be used and then a layer of separator was applied. This was now ready to be sculpted on.

Figure 1: Life Cast (O'Connor, 2022).

'Glued' Eyes

Figure 2: Sculpted 'Glue' Eye (O'Connor, 2022). Figure 3: Gelatin 'Glue' Eye (O'Connor, 2022).

Figure 2 (O'Connor, 2022. Sculpted 'Glue' Eye) and figure 3 (O'Connor, 2022. Gelatin 'Glue' Eye) shows that two different methods have been used to achieve the same look but different effects. Originally, chevant clay was used to sculpt a glue effect over the eye on the cast. This worked, however, it did not give the effect desired as it appeared quite flat and perfectly placed, however, if something was to be glued there would be no control of glue drops and texture.

The idea to use gelatin came to mind, as when previously working with this it has given a gloopy liquid effect, that is what is desired for this image. Melted gelatin was carefully placed onto the eye of the cast and was given the chance to let gravity 'do its thing', which left a realistic looking 'glue dripping' effect. Multiple layers of this were used to build up the textures. The clay side of the sculpt was taken off and both eyes were now going to be a gelatin mould.

Heart Sculpt

Another part of this image is a realistic human heart. The heart sculpt is only in the beginning stages, with the shape being created and some of the arteries being sculpted. Tinfoil was used to create the initial shape of the heart, which was then wrapped in chevant clay. This was done in order to keep the heart as light weight as possible, and also to save materials because if this was sculpted just using clay, a lot of clay would have been used. Whilst sculpting this heart, lots of secondary images are being looked at in order to make sure that the heart is accurate and looks realistic.

Figure 4: Back of Heart Sculpt (O'Connor, 2023). Figure 5: Front of Heart Sculpt (O'Connor, 2023).

Thank you for reading this blog!

Until next time,

Alysha:)

Reference List

O'Connor, A. (2023) Back of Heart Sculpt [Image].

O'Connor, A. (2023) Front of Heart Sculpt [Image].

O'Connor, A. (2022) Gelatin 'Glue' Eye [Image].

O'Connor, A. (2022) Life Cast [Image].

O'Connor, A. (2022) Sculpted 'Glue' Eye [Image].