materials

Giant cross-section flower

Posted by hil

Cross-section flower

My third project for Floriade was making a giant model flower in cross-section, to be the central display in CSIRO’s Division of Plant Industry’s information tent. I really enjoyed making this, too. Some projects go really easily and this was one of those!

The petals were the main challenge, but I decided pretty quickly to use a molded felt technique that I had previously tried with some masks. Essentially you saturate felt in white PVA glue, mold it to the shape you want, and then let it dry. It adopts the shape and becomes fairly hard and plasticised in a way. You can paint it, too, and the way the paint bleeds through the felt can be used in different ways, some quite sensuous. In this case, I made a petal shape in clay and each petal had a double layer with some aluminium flat bar running up the middle to give it extra rigidity. The interesting thing about the technique apart from the obvious texture, is that the felt can be stretched and pulled but remain in one piece. In this respect natural wool felt is much better to work with because it pulls and moves much more than synthetic felt. But synthetic is okay if you don’t have a choice.

I think the flower may end up being displayed in the CSIRO Discovery Centre, where some of my insect models are too; I hope so.

Espresso coffee hats

Posted by hil

Espresso coffee hats

Making these fun hats was another of my Floriade projects. I enjoyed making them and was really happy with how they turned out. They were made for the performance group The Bunch of Posers, who in this guise are called Acappellacino.

To make them I started out by making the cup shape upside down, with a mixture of a garden pot and a garden hanging basket and clay. I started paper mache-ing it, but realised that the edges were going to curl when they dried, so instead I made a pattern from the shape (you put alfoil over it, masking tape it so it stays in the shape, then cut it into sections so
it becomes a 2D flat pattern). I could have made a small model and done the same and scaled it up if I hadn’t started down the paper mache track to begin with. Once I had the pattern, I cut it out of a particular thin dense type of foam sheeting and glued it up into the cup shape.

The top cup rim and the foam is made from a circle of polystyrene, so it gives the foam rigidity at the top. The saucer is slightly thicker foam, and the rim of the saucer is a ring of a kind of tubular insulation foam that the building trade uses (its called PEF backing rod, and its like those lengths of foam kids play with in swimming pools – pool noodles they are called here. But you can buy it in different diameters if you know where to go for building supplies.) The ring gave the saucer a nice rigidity. You can see the cups in the raw making phase in this picture.

Then it has muslin spray-glued on to the foam to give it a protective surface and kind of bring it all together. Then paint, with a bit of latex added to make it stick well.

The coffee pot was made in much the same way, just from foam. I made a pattern straight from my neighbour’s espresso pot and scaled it up (what I should have done with the cup, too!). However it does have a ring of light aluminium flat bar in the top rim and a couple of aluminium bars from the ring up into the lid to make the open lid possible and strong. The steam is dacron, the wadding stuff they put in quilts, with a wire through it.

The coffee cups just sit on your head like sombreros, but the coffee pot needed a chin stap which I filched from a bike helmet.

Here’s a video of the group in action, singing “You’re the Cream in my Coffee’. On my computer the sound only streams smoothly once its played through once.


(Click on the photo)

Ronnie Burkett’s Paper Mache Recipes and other things

Posted by hil

Having seen Ronnie Burkett‘s amazing Tinka’s New Dress in its last season at the Melbourne Festival in 2002, and heard him speak so inspiringly at the Puppetry Summit there at the same time, I was interested to see Burkett’s article on paper mache (via Puppetry News and Views).

The article talks about recipes for making one’s own paper mache pulp, and the various situations they are useful for, but Burkett also says that much of the time he now uses a commercial papier mache pulp called Celluclay. I thought it would be ideal for a court jester’s marrotte that I was making, but its hard to come by here, so I tried Mix-It, which is made in Victoria. When I tried an instant paper pulp before many years ago, it was quite lumpy, but this mix turned out to be nice and smooth to work, and dried really hard and white.

Marrotte
The head was sculpted over a wood and polystyrene base, so that the layer of paper mache is relatively thin, which has the advantage of taking less time to dry, and being economical. It’s also non-toxic and takes paint and finishes of all kinds.I did like reading that Burkett also suffers from impatience waiting for casts to be ready and things to dry.
Marrotte

Liquid rubber and other moulding and casting resources

Posted by hil

I’ve come across some interesting sites to do with making in the last few days.

Smooth-On: These people produce liquid rubbers and plastics for artists and industry: silicone rubbers, urethane rubbers, liquid plastics, foams and so on. They offer detailed product and technical information, and their How to step-by-step turorials on various ways of moulding and casting look great.

Rowe Trading Company: The Australian distributers for Smooth-On, based in Adelaide. I notice that Rowe are also distributers for Bondmaster adhesives. Most of us who make foam puppets are used to using Gel Grip, or a similar type of contact glue to join foam pieces. Its smelly, you have to take care with the fumes, and it takes a few minutes to go tacky before you can press the two surfaces together. Bondmaster produces a much friendlier two-part glue which consists of a pinkish dab-on liquid, and a spray-on catalyst. It bonds foam immediately, has no smell to speak of, and is easier to get into deep places, and onto fabric. In a few circumstances though, say when seams are under pressure, I still opt to use Gel Grip. And the last I heard, Bondmaster is hard to buy except in industrial quantities.

Barnes Products: I’ve heard good things about this Sydney moulding and casting supplier. Their catalogue is online, and they have a range of videos and books on moulding and casting.

Activa products: Activa make an interesting air-dry casting compound called LI-QUA-CHÉ, which is a recycled paper fibre polymer based compound. Its looks like clay slip, and dries to a hard durable glossy satin finish.