If you follow me on Instagram, you might know that I've recently decided to learn how to sculpt. It all started with this...
Portrait of the Artist As a Old Pumpkin
It was Halloween and we didn't get it together enough to carve an actual pumpkin so I sculpted one with some Super Sculpey.
I got such a nice reaction from everyone decided to do another one--this time, of a much nicer face...
I tried to capture his steely-eyed menace...
I was going to do the whole "Thursday Gang" from my wife's podcast, but Al seemed a bit weirded out when I showed it to him so I thought I'd move on to a subject who wouldn't mind...
This gal
This time I decided to go further, and researched toy making. I found that they will often move to wax for the final sculpt where you can get finer detail (Super Sculpey is a bit soft and can be hard to work with). So I got me some Smooth-On for the silicone mold and found a recipe for toy wax. I didn't take pictures of any of this, but here's the final wax sculpt...
Close enough...
Now I was ready to make a mold to cast in resin (I thought I might make Christmas tree ornaments for friends/family as gifts), but first I wondered if I could make a food-safe mold and cast it in chocolate.
Turns out, there IS a food safe mold...
I made a mold with two Wendy heads.
Tempering chocolate isn't easy and a it turns out that using a mold like this to make filled truffles is really hard. Out of about eight attempts I was able to get four, which I gave to Jenna, Al, Greg, and Jeff.
Left: Dark chocolate with dark chocolate ganache filling. Right: White chocolate with milk chocolate ganche filling.
Then I made the ornaments which took forever. I was working on them the night before we left for New York which drove Alison crazy because I needed to pack, but was, instead spending the whole night painting.
I was a little rushed so you can see some red in the white brim of the hat and stuff, but otherwise I think it turned out pretty good.
I found this whole process to be unbelievably satisfying. To go from the original clay sculpt to finished reproductions that I could give away felt incredible. To be honest, I became a bit obsessed with sculpting and the desire to try and get better. It's all I could think about.
And that's about the time I saw the new STAR WARS and started the project I'm working on now...
But I'll get into that one later.