Well, this morning we're off to Dallas... an annoying five hour drive. As part of my requirements to advance in my school, my evil teacher has us attend a competition. The only one available is the Taiji Legacy in Dallas... so off we go!
I'll be doing my thing sometime Saturday and then driving home. And then my son gets on a 2:40 plane back to Oregon. It's a weekend for travelling.
Yesterday I made a silicon mold of Nik's face -- we used a slightly different application technique this time, and are beginning to get good results with it. It's tough to not get bubbles, though. The Body Double is very thick, and it's hard to get that surface layer down tight.
I painted in a silicon mask yesterday, too. Many of the coloring effects I was going for worked perfectly!
The first layer, I painted in a very thin, translucent white. Then I mottled some pink here and there -- around the lips, around the face. Once that had set, I dropped in an icky grey layer. Immediately after that, I mottled in some icky green.
The next layer was thick, and was a putrescent flourescent green. Not actually the color I was looking for, but it isn't going to be seen anyway. The last layer was another translucent white.
Silicon flows like nobody's business... for ages. A half hour later and the stuff is still creeping into the low points. So for this last layer, I turned the mask open-side down. Most of the last layer dripped out. Oh well.
For the final works, I'm going to thin the silicon for the first layers to make it easier to lay in subtled shadings. Then I'm going to thicken the last layers so they won't run as easily.
I had some problems mixing the silicon. Since I was only using tiny amounts for some of the coloring, I eye-balled the mix. Bad. There are several spots where it never hardened and the face tore when I took it out.
Which is, actually, a pretty neat effect.
I'll be getting some measuring spoons so I can do fine mixes for the color layers, and still get a good mix.