SOMETHING FOR MY ETSY STORE - PART 3

Sorry for the delay in this folks as normal for me (most of us too I suppose) much going on offline. This part of the ouroboros project is more of an update but I can show you what I have done so far as I changed how I was going to do the scales.

I was initially going to use a scale like mesh cloth to ‘imprint’ as scale effect onto the upper body of the snake & the effect worked but for one small detail. It turned out that the scales the cloth imprinted were too small for this size of snake sadly. So I abandoned that plan & came up with a more radical time consuming method. Seeing as I was sculpting the head scales individually I decided the best option in the long run was to carry on sculpting the scales in this fashion. All 1396 of them!.

51 scales on the stomach

104 scales on the head (upper & lower combined)

1241 scales on the upper body

As I say very time consuming & not I might also add not finished in a single day. Cutting individual scales then sculpting them onto the body is hard on tired eyes trust me on this lol. Below you can see the finished result:

 

To create the scales I used two sizes of plastic straws. I started at the snake’s mouth with the smaller of the scales working back over the body towards the top & back of the snakes head. Below you can see the two sized straws & a few of the scales I created.

 

The next stage will be to cover the entire project in around 4/6 layers of liquid molding latex. Now normally this would not be near enough for support of the finished mould when dry. Whilst all the details would be copied into the liquid latex when dry, the final mould would simply be too flexible to work with as I want to use one of my plaster pulp mixes to create the final ouroboros to attach to the mirror. In previous liquid latex molds (mini skull trophy project) I added support to the final latex mould by adding a layer of fine cotton mesh material in-between the final layers of latex as I created the final layers. At this time I no longer have any such material at hand so I will instead be creating a pure plaster shell ‘over’ the dried latex mould. More on this in the next post.

The final molded snake will of course be as hollow as I can create it even with using the plaster pulp mix instead of my more traditional & much preferred strips. Also the plaster pulp mix I will be using is of course almost as half as light in weight as it would be if I created it in pure sculpting plaster. I will begin the next stage of this project tomorrow & should have the pictures to show you in the next day or two.