Today was a good day. The weather cooperated so I was able to finish fiberglassing the bear’s chin. And behold! A video to prove it. While the fiberglass was kicking, I worked on the bear’s arms. It took me a little while to figure out exactly how I wanted the gusset under the arm to […]
I did the next layer of fiberglass on the lower jaw of the bear today. Sorry, no photos but tomorrow, I should have a video for you. I’ll be heading in to the studio to finish up the arms and to saw the jaw apart. Because I need it to be a completely enclosed thing,
Important note: The staff at the Virka fabric store speak no English. I don’t know the words for sewing machine, needle, elastic, boning, nylon strapping, or buckle. Fortunately, the lady helping me was very nice and willing to listen to my half-Icelandic, half-point and grunt. She made very good guesses and she spoke slowly when
I started today by sanding the bear down to remove the rough spots. The white patches are where the fiberglass has been sanded. I cut out the eyes of the bear, which I’ll replace later, with a tile-cutting bit on my dremel tool. While it is possible to sand the eyes down to a glossy,
Making the Bear’s nose Read More »
Round two of fiberglassing the bear went much better. The glass on thmpts in the morning after he left so the fumes would have a chance to dissapate. This is way I was not going to do the fiberglass work at the workshop. Today I did the last of the fiberglassing for an audience of
Finished fiberglassing the bear Read More »
For the fiberglass resin I’m using, I have to use 99% resin to 1% hardener. At the moment, I’m having to face the bitter truth that I mis-judged the amount of hardener and didn’t put enough in. This means that the fiberglass I just put on the bear’s face is remaining a gooey, toxic mess.
I disassembled the body today and made patterns. Once I had the basic pattern made, I folded the paper in half, trimmed it to make it symetrical. With the clean, tidy pattern, I cut the cloth and stitched it together. I also started installing the boning today.
To make the body, I started by creating a fullsize mockup of the bear’s torso. Next, I covered the form in cloth and established the basic fit. In this photo, I’m attaching the boning. Because I am making a pattern of the bear, I’ll pin everything into place, then label each piece of boning and
The body and boning Read More »
Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died so I don’t have very many pictures of this part of the process. I first removed the lower jaw and then carved out an upper and lower palate for the bear. While I’ll fiberglass all of it, I’ll wind up cutting some away later giving the bear a
Prepping for fiberglass Read More »
Once I had the life mask of Rob finished, I was ready to start the sculpture. My first step was to do a full size drawing of the bear to make certain that I had the proportions correct. Gummi Þor had already done a sculpture to demonstrate how the proportions would have to change from
Sculpting the head Read More »
I’m building a polar bear costume for a childrens’ hospital here, and for the head, needed a life cast of someone’s face to build on. Back in Portland, I have several life casts of different people that I sculpt on when I’m making a mask. Wigforms are lovely things for wigs, but they are not