Hand Casts & Clay Sculpting Part 3

Here's the exciting conclusion of my clay sculpt and mold pour. I was very happy with how my mold came out from last week, and by giving it the appropriate time to cure I knew there wasn't any moisture left in my mold, meaning no more exothermic heat. I had previously painted about 8-10 layers of liquid latex over my sculpted mold and now was to see if everything would go accordingly to plan. I decided that I would go for a laceration look to the piece over the burn, which in my opinion would need the coupling of another make-up to achieve for my limited time in class.

Here's the appliance piece ready to peel.

Which using latex, it has a distinct characteristic of wanting to stick to itself. When pulling the latex it's important to powder the top and underneath of your piece as you gently, gently, ever so gently peel your piece away from the mold. Imagine this is the President's daughter that needs her band-aid taken off, that's how important it is to be gentle.

If you don't use enough layers of liquid latex, your piece can be frail and susceptible to tearing. I started simply rolling along the edges and spinning the mold so eventually the middle piece was the last piece to pluck out.

Here's the final piece, pulled and powdered. It's roughly the size of a coffee cup lid.

To apply the piece, I dabbed a bit of ProAide on the middle of my hand and a bit on the underside of the latex piece. It's important to apply your prosthetics from the middle and work outward as you apply ProsAide. This insures that your edges are flat and you have the room for adjustment considering you're applying this to a moving person.

One key thing to remember is to stipple around the edges with liquid latex. This adheres the pieces further, but most importantly blends the edges of the piece out to the rest of the applied area.

Once adhered, I began trying to find my skin tone among the options of mask grease paint. You may remember that by adding a drop of GP20 to your kit make-up. I always have the hardest time trying to match my skin tone. Being Italian and German, I get a flushed pale olive hued skin tone in the winter. I tried my best by blending highlights of shadow to contrast the effect.

Remember to blend and stipple beyond the piece and your stippled latex. This helps blend the rest of the skin to the effect.

I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable with the skin tone and ready to move onto the effect.

Here I began painting into the crevices of the sculpted piece with a dark brown. Take your time because blending with grease paint is a chore and cleaning it an area you mistakenly applied to is even worse.

After laying a dark brown, I then began applying a brighter red to give the look a depth thanks to the duality of color.

There were a few edges that didn't seem to want to stick right, so rather than scrapping it all Carl suggested adding slight bruising. If the eye was going to travel there anyway because of faulty application, then make it travel there to see an effect instead.

I applied a darker purple and blue to create my bruising, but to cut the deep look of it I then applied the base coat of my skin tone to feather out the edges. This crafted a nice, under the skin kinda look for the bruising.

Also I put a small dab of red along the "ring" of the piece. My hopes were that by taking a torn sponge and wiping away from the effect that I would be able to create a look of red soreness.

At this point I was pretty happy with this and decided to apply blood. This worked best by gently filling the crevices of the piece and letting any over flow go where it may.

Here's a close up of the piece all bloodied out. Overall, I was extraordinarily happy with the piece. It's the perfect size to apply to a hand, face, forehead, or chest. Perhaps next time I would sculpt it a bit higher to allow for deeper crevices, but the thinness really allowed for the maximum in believability for a satanic laceration. The maximum for someone who's never done it before...

Here's my finished piece in all it's glory; taken with a proper digital camera. Here you can appreciate the depth (as in measurement) of the prosthetic. Thanks again to awesomely talented Jacqueline for the pic. I definitely need to invest in the tools to properly document my work better.

Removal is fairly easy. Some gentle peeling and a wipe down with Bond Off leaves your skin smelling like cinnamon and another pass with a baby wipe and it's like it never happened. You're left with a piece that can be tossed away or save for posterity's sake.

Another student did a festering bullet wound. I particularly like the vein work she painted on that extended past the applied piece.

This claw scratch from another student was amazing in its application. The edges are so faint that it truly looked believable.

Next week we'll pour a gelatin prosthetic of our molds to show how different materials can yield different results from the same mold. Only 3 more classes left to go...