Big Shiny New Project: Phase 1

I am now coming to the end of my time as a student and for my final major 'professional' project i've decided to go a little bit overboard. I want to create something ambitious that really stands out visually in my portfolio. To do this i've been looking into various projects and on the advice of the my tutors and the photographers I met up with in New York I decided to try all of them...

To this end I had a wonderful day in the model-making dungeon at AUCB yesterday glooping massive quantities of blue paste all over the beautiful Amy B from Premier Model Management. With the help of model making gurus Jack Gardner and Alan Hinton (sporting the rather dapper green tie-dye overalls) I'm creating a life size cast of Amy's head, neck and shoulders for an interesting if slightly mad portrait/concept project. More on this later, for now enjoy the time-lapse video of the casting process below with a couple of snaps to explain the process.



1: We create a latex skull cap to protect Amy's amazing long blond hair. The cap was then cut to exactly match Amy's hairline and sealed with liquid latex, her pony tail was then placed safely in an attractive blue carrier bag and taped shut.

2: Next we covered the exposed skin and remaining hair strands on Amys' neck and back with Vaseline and began to plaster-cast the back half of the head starting with a wall crest in order to remove the mold later.

3: We then continued plastering until the entire back of the head, neck and shoulders was covered.

4: Now came the fun part, having Vaselined Amys' eyelashes eyebrows we then began to gloop on the Alginate, (the same stuff you get your brace made up with a the dentist) in order to get a high detail cast of the face. This wonderful blue stuff was lots of fun to use and Amy was an absolute dream to work with showing absolutely no fear or discomfort during the whole process.

5: Once the Alginate was on and the fine detail areas round the nostrils clear we applied a layer of Scrim (coarse hessian sacking) to give the plaster shell something to bind to and then began to add the final strengthening layers of plaster bandaging to complete the mold.

6: Having completed the mold we then let it dry for a couple of minutes before cracking it open down the ridge seam and hey presto a perfect mold of Amy!

Watch this space for updates on how the cast turned out.