ALL TOGETHER
This was a quick, simple project, and I don’t feel the need to break things down. To sum up what I discovered:
- Plaster of Paris holds amazing detail, but it is quite brittle.
- Sodium alginate hydrogel also holds amazing detail and is pretty easy to work with but doesn’t feel very durable.
- Airbrushes are a fantastic tool, and while annoying to use are often worth the effort.
- Spray-painting in the cold is a non-starter.
Like most others, our fingers were squished by the molding procedure, but still retained impressive details like the knuckle folds. still. For post-processing, I simply filed the rough ends of the brittle plaster into some smooth shapes.
When it came to painting, I noticed most other groups lost fine detail with a thick coat of osprey paint. It’s possible the cold contributed here since when I tried to spray a thin black primer coat, it didn’t stick in some pieces and pooled in others. This happened even when the can was prewarmed and the model was at room temperature
I wanted to keep detail anyway, and I left the black undercoat as was and sprayed a light color with an airbrush to imitate zenithal highlighting, a mini-painting technique to enhance model detail. In zenithal highlighting, you start with a dark base color, then spray with a light color in the same manner as light would strike the model. The chiaroscuro shading effect highlights detail and can then be colored by things like ink.
I had a whole plan of building layers of color to reach a human skin tone, but the airbrush was just too fickle. I stopped when I though the color was interesting and the details were preserved. We later added a clear coat as suggested but I think it does more harm than good to the look of the piece.
This project was cheap, with sodium alginate being the most expensive material. I enjoyed looking
at up plaster mold-making jobs from the architect of the capitol, and using a commissioned mini-painter as a benchmark for this work seems very on point.
|
Type |
Cost |
$/# |
Source |
# |
Tot($) |
|
Materials |
Plaster |
0.0028 |
50 g |
0.14 |
|
|
Sodium |
0.06 |
35 g |
2.10 |
||
|
Paint |
0.05 |
~ 10 mL |
0.5 |
||
|
Torx Tapping Screws |
0.21 |
2 |
0.42 |
||
|
Labor |
Casting |
26 |
2 hrs |
52 |
|
|
Painting |
40 |
2 unit |
80 |
||
|
Overhead |
Airbrush |
~ |
2 hrs |
negligible |
|
|
Total Cost |
135.16 |
In the end, I don’t love the durability of plaster of Paris for engineering projects, but sodium alginate is very quick and easy compared to eco flex or other common materials for fine details. I’ll consider next time I have a similar project.
CLEEEEEAAAANNNNEAN!
