Week 4 (Week Beginning 15/02/10)

Plaster Models

(In Week 3) After attempting to re make my shape using my rubbish gelflex mould I have chosen to make some new shapes using the band saw to cut up some chunks of plaster, like I did originally to make the shape I've been working with a lot. Going to keep with a similar shape as I'm quite fond of triangles at the moment, so at the end of last week I made a couple of plaster triangle shapes to cut more 30cm and I needed it to be 13cm deep (I tried 2 times the size but that seemed like it would be a bit too big and After attempting to remake my plaster shape by using my rubbish gelflex mould I have chosen triangles shapes out of, I tried to make them by measuring a right angle triangle that was 1.5 times as big as the original shape making it 19cm x 23cm, the hypotenuse difficult to cut on the band saw, also if I was to make it out of glass it would be too expensive just for testing). As I am not used to working with just plaster (when working with plaster, silica and HT the amount of water is measured in liter, and just working with plaster the water is measured in pint) I estimated at I would need 4 pints of water and about 2.75kg of plaster after I set up my mould and I mixed and poured in the plaster the mould collapsed, I managed to pull it back together with a little help but it there wasn't enough plaster to get up the 13cm in depth, so I tried again with the same amounts of plaster unfortunately as the last mould had spilt I didn't find out if there was enough plaster to get to the 13cm point on the inside of my mould. But fortunately this time there were no spillages.

(Now in Week 4) I have started working on cutting out some new triangular shapes and working on some organic flowing surface decoration/texture. To make the texture on the piece below I just stared carving into the plaster with ceramics and wax carving tools to give a nice organic flowing type of efect. My original idea was to make gelflex of an interesting piece of wood then amke a wax of it, pour plaster over the top to make a block to cut out on the band saw then to melt the wax out to give the imprint of the wood. I may still do this but I really like the texture I have created.