I sometimes toy with abstraction, but most of my masks and faces are attempts at realism. I don’t know why I make faces (no pun intended!) but I think it is just human nature.

Here is some recent work with paper clay built up over a ready made plastic face mask/mold. After the paper clay dried, I was able to remove it from the plastic, but not without some minor damage.

I made a mold of this face in order to cast in cement or epoxy resin, but it is not a good mold. The silicone was old and I probably should have scrapped it! Instead I wasted my time and materials to make a fully cured & sealed plaster support mold for it. The mold is flawed with air bubles and larger voids, so the casts from it need too much cleanup.

Now I have a cleaned & modified cement cast, shown at left & center below. I plan to make a new mold that I really hope will be better. But I will experiment with a gelatin & glycerine mold, just to make things more interesting! And that could easily be a grand fail, so fingers crossed!

The other photos are also worked on casts from the original flawed silicone mold. I do like that the necessary clean up, along with the different materials used, makes them unique!

When I pour material to fill my cast, and if I plan well, I “float” a properly sized removable block in the cast. This reduces the quantity of the expensive material, and makes for a lighter weight cast.

Below are the outer “mother” mold and the inner silicone molds used for that and the first faces shown above. The wire mesh face was formed over the cement face that will also be used for a new mold.

Below is an oil based clay face, and the “eco-resin” Mix-2-Mold cast from this original. I don’t love it, but it is just right for Drawer #6 in my shadow boxes in Six Drawers series. There are several brands of “eco-resin” which seem to all be gypsum plaster based, but modifed to be a bit easier to mix, faster curing, and stronger. However they are heavy, and also quite brittle. They are not strong as thin pieces, and they chip easily or break if dropped or hit by a hard object.