My work is officially 'museum' quality!

No, really! I'm as shocked as you are!

SAWA Awards - 'Behind the Scenes'

 Seeing as the awards are out and about now I see no problem with showing off how we made them.

I must stress that neither Liam nor I were responsible for sculpting the master, that was all our tutor Eddie's work - we just cast more and finished them! XD



Liam made the silicone moulds before I got involved in the job but I taped them up while he mixed each batch of resin so we had a nice little production line going. Here's two in the moulds just after pouring. The resin went off in about an hour or two so we could get several batches done in quick succession if we really pushed ourselves.



Fresh out of the moulds. Some came out better than others and we had a small pile of rejects left at the end.



All this excess resin flashing had to be carved off and sanded before we could get them painted up. It wasn't the most glamorous job but it had to be done!



The original had a really nice matte textured finish but sanding it down obviously removed this so a thorough blast with the airbrush gave it a nice texture again. I'm rubbish with the airbrush so Liam sorted out all the painting. To be honest, he really did most of the work on this project but casting and sanding was such a time consuming job that I came in handy to share the workload!



Painted!



They were really nice to hold and you couldn't help but start practising your Oscar acceptance speech whenever you picked one up. :P

Nearly finished!

Mr Unicorn got his hair in this week.

 

I'd bought some beautiful Tibetan Lambswool from -link- (who I'd definitely recommend as a seller!) a month or so ago and it was really lovely to work with even though I seem to have inhaled more hair than glued. XD

The mane was the easy part as all I needed to do was cut out a couple of long strips and glue it on but the beard and chest hair/mane was a little more tricky.I ended up layering the strips of hair for the chest part and using individual hanks for the beard which worked well on one side but terribly on the other. :/

For a while he modelled this rather fetching (and important!) sign too... XD

Next came the flocking and oh god, just getting to this point was STRESS-FUUUUULLL!

I knew I needed some white and a fleshtone colour and I assumed that flock would be relatively easy to get hold of as an art material but when I came away from both big art shops in town empty handed I started to get a little bit concerned. I ended up getting the bus out to the Glasgow Fort shopping centre (through which I lost money as the fare was £3.45 and I only had a five pound note and they didn't give change, arrhhgh!) to try the big Hobbycraft there as I knew they had a lot of scrapbooking/cardmaking stuff.

Alas, all they had in the way of flock was a single pack of glitter flock.

I bought it anyway as I thought I could use it to practice with and I may be able to use it for future projects but still, it was a disappointing day as I'd been so sure I'd get what I needed there that I didn't bother to order some online as a backup! As a result I spent the journey back to Glasgow on my phone, frantically trying to find somewhere that would sell the colours I needed for a reasonable price and - most importantly - would send them as quickly as possible. To my relief I managed to find some and ordered it up there and then. They arrived yesterday and to say that I was underwhelmed was something of an understatement. I'd been so fixated on just buying some flock that I hadn't read the description properly and had ended up buying some absolutely TINY tubs of the stuff. I was so worried I wouldn't have enough that I ordered some more last night, only to discover this morning that I actually had more than I needed. XD

I still need to do another couple of layers tomorrow I think but the colours blend nicely enough and so far none of it has fallen off so I think *touchwood* I'm going to be ok! (BTW my iPhone photos really don't give the right colour cast - the photo above is closer to actual colour than the one below which looks too pink.)

 

He still needs his base finished off but the actual head is more or less finished now! All going well I should have him mounted up and completed by tomorrow or Friday. :D

 

 



 


(and because I'm really sad...)