Inspiration restored!

• Well, I'm VERY pleased to be able to say that my artistic block didn't last for long, and soon after my last post I was back to work again!
• I've gone back to bullet-point style blogging as my last few posts have lost all the paragraphs again, which makes them hard to read and really annoys me!
• I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a model for the MECs Championship show, I kept it a secret until the show but can now reveal what I've been up to.
• The model began life as a copy of my sculpture "Frodo" from last year; I wanted to produce a smaller version that I could cast in lots of fun colours (which are expensive sadly).
• Other artists have produced reduced size copies of their sculptures - some do this using rapid prototyping , some do it by completely re-sculpting thier model in a smaller scale. I didn't have time to sculpt a model for the MECs, and don't have the resources to pay for expensive scanning and reduced size 3D printing (which also reduces details), so, after much research I invested in some pretty interesting resin that when dealt with properly, shrinks over a few days/weeks whilst still keeping all the details crisp and clear.
• The resin isn't the nicest stuff to use; it cures in seconds, so took a few attepts to get a half-decent cast. As the resin is mixed with water prior to pouring (the evaporation of the water causes the shrinkage), the cast felt cold, sweaty, and jelly-like (bergh!). Very quickly the water started to seep out of the resin causing it to shrink. This photo shows the model about an hour after it was cast, the lollipop sticks were placed tight around it when first cast, so you can see it has already begun to downsize.

• I took two copies with the new resin, mixed at slightly different ratios (to "hedge my bets" at getting at least one good one).
• The photo below shows the two casts next to a solid (normal) resin cast in black, for size comparison. As you can see, the copy on the left has had a head-start and has already shrunk by quite an amount.

• The photo below shows the progress after a few days - the resin turns from white to brown during it's transformation. The black model is a solid resin copy, for size comparison.
• You can also see in this photo another experimental model; this is a copy of Fly Fishing that I took using another unusual resin that GROWS instead of shrinking!
• Both types of resin grow/shrink at varying rates depending on the thickness of the part, so at these stages the casts are all looking decidedly warped! This does even out though, when they're finally done changing.

• Below is that same giant Fly Fishing model shown once it was fully grown - the resin becomes very fragile as it grows and as you can see this copy has lost an ear from the top horse, but as an experiment I was very impressed! I am hoping to try this method out on another of my sculptures, but for the moment that has to wait for a few other projects to be completed first, and for me to find the funds to deal with a larger model (each copy will need much more mold rubber, more resin, more filler....)
• Sadly this resin is perishable, so the large copy shown below had to be disposed of. The other copy shown is a metal cast cope, and is nicely illustrating just how shiny and metallic these casts can be!

• Back to Frodo! The photo below shows the finished shrunken casts next to that same black copy. As both turned out reasonably well (lots of pinholes etc but those were to be fixed at a later stage) I chose to go with the smaller of the two, pictured on the left.
• This copy is almost exactly 50% of the size of the original copy. Just the right size for what I had planned...

• To be continued.....
• (please contact me if the photos cause problems with email updates, I'll try to limit them to 5 per post)