Morbius

Morbius bust finished. Originally sculpted in homemade wax based on Gary Overman's Zen wax.
I moulded a coffee jar lid and cast it as a base for the bust.Once again I spend alot of time sculpting but then do a bit of a rush job on painting.I need to take more care in that and getting Jordu Schell's dvd on maquette painting would probably help.

resin cast painted

resin cast primed

wip wax sculpture

wip wax sculpture

The Vulture finished

The Vulture sculpted in home made '360' wax based on Gary Overman's wax recipe. I found my version of this recipe made the wax sculpture float in the silicone rubber while I was molding it.The sculture needs to be secured and anchored down properly before pouring the silicone rubber.
Painted using just brushes and not airbrush and using scraped pastel dust to add a red tint to his nose and cheeks.

home made wax

Finally got round to making wax's based on Gary's recipes.The grey one started off as Zen wax and the tan one started off as 360. I say started off as I kept modifying them (adding more carnuaba and magnesium carbonate) to try and get what I was after.I wanted something I could use like a softish clay in the initial build up and then when cooled to room temperature behaved like a hard tooling wax to take fine detail.
I don't think that perfect wax exists but these seem to be a good compromise.

Tigra finished and painted

wolverine painted

Again,handpainted but I should learn to use an airbrush properly to get a better surface finish

Tigra WIP

A wip of the Marvel character 'Tigra'. TMS wax again. Started with a head and then proceeded to get the torso right making sure the twists and tilts were there.Bought a few female anime sculpts on trip to Japan and inspired to have a go at one also because I've never sculpted a female before.
This is an 1/8th scale as most of those Japanese sculpts seem to be.Should be quick to do since it is small but hard on my failing eyesight.

wolverine finished and primed

Masked and unmasked versions

moulding and casting

I wanted to improve the quality of my resin casting so I bought a 20 litre pressure pot from Airlesspro.

Initially there were some air leaks when I filled it up to 40psi using my small airbrush compressor.I discovered these by brushing on a soap solution and observing where the airbubbles were forming.

I tried to plug these up the best I could using silicone sealant but found I was still losing about 2 psi every hour.I think the leak may be coming from the rim where the lid sits on the container, Its not ideal but its still workable-just means I have to top the air pressure up every now and again making sure it kept between 35 and 40 psi.Its definitely worth it and makes a significant difference as illustrated by this photo of a silicone rubber mould-one made with a pressure pot and the other made without.Notice all the air bubbles in the uncompressed silicone mould.These cause 'dimples' in the resin cast. There are practically no air bubbles in the compressed mould,so no dimples.

As for the resin casting itself-well what a difference.

There are so many pinhole airbubbles in the uncompressed resin cast compared to almost none in the compressed one.These pinholes are invisible on the resin cast until you spray paint on them then they are revealed and you cant miss them! I used to use Tiranti's Biresin. I really like it and have always used it but because it cures so fast, there is no time to get it into the pot and compress it before it sets.So I have tried Smooth-cast 310 which has a longer pot life and demould time to allow me to pressurise it before it cures.

It seems fine but I dont like the smell of it.So after all that I managed to get out a protocast of Wolverine.

I still need to do a masked version aswell but I've run out of resin right now.