Thursday 26 May 2011

Hand held candles??

For the deathly corner in the study Kirby and I had decided that candles being held in some way by hands would be a good idea as hands and mentioned in the book and are associated with death in the book. We consulted simon on the best way to do this and he suggested casting a hand using Alginate. He began by giving us this tube in which Kirby could place her hand and the Alginate could be poured into.


Simon then showed us how to mix the alginate. One part alginate to one part water. We used a jug and and small pot to get enough for our tube.
Once the alginate was mixed in a bowl it was poured into the tube and then Kirby had to quickly get her hand into the tube and adjust it into the right position. The alginate took just over 5 minutes to go off.
Because of its rubbery consistency once gone off Kirby could pull her hand out of the mould without damaging it.
Once the mould was made we used plaster to cast the hand. To do this we got a bowl of water and slowly added plaster powder to the water until it was just under the water line, then simple stirred it around with our hands for a couple of seconds. Then we simply poured the plaster into the alginate mould and left it about an hour.

The tube that simon had made was easily dismantled and left the alginate inside, we simply used a scalpel to cut away the alginate (making sure not to ruin it as we needed to make two hands and would need to use the mould again) The alginate came away fairly easily and was not ruined for the next cast. We removed the first plaster cast and then resembled the tube with the alginate mould inside. We mixed some more plater and repeated the previous process but create a second hand cast.
We decided to paint the hands gold to stay with the baroque theme.
After a couple of experiments with other candles we wanted to create a really aged effects using layers and layers of candle wax. I really like the effect this creates as its a typical but timeless horror element.

We wanted to place the the two hand candles in the study either side of the screen as they would had to the horror corner that was to be created. We decided to use raw plugs in the back of the hand in order to attach them to the wall, unfortunately we failed to realise that when these are used they open up and therefore when attaching the hand they both cracked quite badly. Luckily using super glue and poly filler the situation was rectified both hands stayed on the wall.

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