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.

wolverine torso

Refined torso.Alot of the musculature will be covered with his ripped costume but I wanted to get his muscles right anyway.Found when doing this that I dont have to be so careful about symmetry and perfect forms because there are always irregular lumps and bumps that are present in a real body that are always different from one physique to another (within reason) and its these irregularities that make your sculpture more life like.

wolverine leg

Finished one of the legs.Did the boot in tms wax.Doing the folds and creases in the trouser leg was quite easy.This took a long time but hopefully the other leg won't take as long as I have worked out a lot of the problems in doing this one.

arms finished

Finished the arms (apart from the claws on right hand).Decided not to give him gloves partly because this is an excercise in how detailed I could do hands and partly because I want it to be a more realistic interpretation of wolverine.

cut up wolverine

Cut him up. This sculpture has been dragging its heels lately so working on an individual arm or leg will help speed up the process and also its just physically easier.

I used a jewellers blade to cut him up but its almost useless.Maybe this wax is too gunky.Instead of the nice clean saw break it decides to break off somewhere else (see close up pic).Managed to sort that out though.

wolverine WIP

Body in medium grade willow wax.Using the infrared heat lamp to warm up the wax so I can use it like clay.Have to work fast as it hardens pretty fast but better than trying to build up big masses by slowly dripping using the wax pen. I got the anatomy Ed for christmas and I am using that in conjunction with a body builder magazine,Taishiro Kiya kits and anatomy books to create the anatomy.