The clay original of my Christmas Angel broke up during the mold-making process. Plenty of time to restore and salvage it later. The trade-off of a really good working mold is very much worth it. I can crank these out by the dozen now. God help us!
It’s time to gear up for Christmas, and this year I don’t feel confident enough to take on a nativity scene. So I’m going full-angel from now until December. (I did start a more pagan-esque greenman, and a Queen of Hearts, but their fate is in question at this point. Some day I do want to sculpt through a deck of cards, though.)
After experimenting with different kinds of plaster and cement, I’ve found a fantastic new material: white Portland cement– basically sidewalk. And at $20 for a 94-lb bag of powder, it’s virtually free. Here’s a moon I cast in cement with a little pillow of steel wool mixed in and no sand. I sanded it smooth and used Johnson & Johnson floor wax on it. Voila! Next, I’ll try to see how closely I can imitate the look of real sculpted marble.
This is one that I tossed off pretty casually while listening to an audiobook and letting my thoughts wander. But now it’s growing on me. I think i’ll try to make more like this one. After careful consideration, I’ve isolated the one factor that must have made this moon face work: “Ogilvie and the Gold of the Raj.”
I’ll just keep trying until I get it right. Some day I’ll have the hippest sun-moon pair of all, Sun: Marilyn Monroe … Moon: a youngish George Sanders.
Here’s a moon face that I tried to make so that the personality or expression might change depending on light & shadow. Full disclosure, this is in fact yet another failed attempt to capture the magic of Marilyn Monroe.
I can make crescent moons that look like moons. But how do you make a full-moon face that looks like a moon? I’m still exploring that crucial question in life– this time by adding craters. Ooh! Maybe next time I’ll steal the idea of the rocket in the eye.
