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| Head of Demon skin rug |
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Ok a while back (about 2 years) a friend told me about Liquid Neoprene. Not long after another friend told me he was using it for some prop and costume pieces. Now liquid neoprene has been used in Hollywood for special effects and masking for years I have just never had the chance to play with it. Last year the friend who first told me about it mentioned it again and said I should try it. So I got hold of some and started playing with it to see how it works and what I can do with it. The first thing I made where some horns for The Demon Skin Rug project. Now let me say I could not find much information on the inter net about working with liquid neoprene. About all I found was that you slip cast it in a plaster mold. That sounded simple enough I knew how to make a plaster mold for slip casting from all my work with silicone and ceramics. So I made my master sculpt made a two part mold since I did not have any potters (mold making) plaster on Hand I used Hydro cal. Now one of the big differences between plaster and Hydro cal is Plaster is much more absorbent than hydro Cal so if you are going to try working with neoprene it will save you a lot of time to use plaster. After my mold had cured and dried a couple days I poured my castings. Now when slip casting ceramics letting the slip set in a dry cured mold 15 mins will usually give you a good thick skin.....NOT so with a Hydro Cal mold and neoprene an hour later and I still did not have a thick skin. At an hour and a half I poured out the excess neoprene and looked at the skin on the inside of the mold. Wow less than 1/16 thick I much be doing something wrong,( I later found out I need to wait 2-4 hours lol, also I should not have used soft neoprene). Humm needing the pieces soon I wondered what I could do to save my castings....I tried soaking cotton balls in the neoprene and stuffing them into the horns. IT Worked I had to wait for each layer to dry but a fan or putting it outside in the sun helped speed that up and it worked fine. Soon I had two solid horns that I could de mold and start finishing. Well on de molding I was not happy with how the texture I had sculpted turned out ( I should have spent more time on that). It had looked good on the master but once it was black it did not not look "horn" enough for my taste. Now in nature horns are made up mostly of the same materials that hair and finger nails are....Hummm ......hair.....is just a fiber and I knew that the cotton balls dipped in neoprene worked to stiffen and give support.... I had some cotton roving left over from a project so I tried laying some of that on the horn and painting neoprene over it. What do you know it worked. This allowed me to "sculpt" layers of texture onto the horn. The layers of cotton roving also gave strength to the horns. After the neoprene was dry I painted the horns lightly with silver to help bring out the texture.
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| Side view of Demon head | | |
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Over all I was very pleased with out the horns turned out. They look good and they are still soft enough that I comfortable with putting them on a "RUG" but are firm enough that they will hold up.
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| paw | |
The nice thing was that I learned that I could use the Neoprene and fiber ( in this case cotton Roving) to add texture and strength to a cast piece. I also used this same technique on the back of the paws, the nails, and the ears. Next time I think I am going to try something a little firmer on the nails but other wise I liked how it turned out.
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| Finished rug.11/13 | | | | |
The finished rug is just over 7 1/2 foot from the tip of the nose to the ends of the back legs. I decided to only put the two front paws on the rug. Next I tried making a wall mask and a couple more small pieces. I finished this the rug in October of 2012
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