On the 22nd of October I began the face casting process, which followed the same principles as the foot casting. Using the Body Double Release Cream/Silicone again to create the moulds which had to be applied thickly and carefully around my nostrils so that my breathing wasn't obstructed.
Once applied a Mod Roc cast had to be made over the top after 5-10 minutes, giving the Silicone enough time to dry. Again with the Mod Roc case the material had to be applied carefully around my nostrils. Straws can be used, being placed in the nostril so that there is no chance of your breathing being obstructed, but I thought that I may lose some of the detail around the nose if I did this so I trusted my friend Lauren to apply the materials cautiously around my nose.
Releasing yourself from a cast of your face is a lot easier than one of your foot, or any that you are trying to create a fully dimensional form of. As the cast is hollow it is easy to just peel and pull away without any struggle or hassle.
Having saying that I did have a painful experience with the first mould we did because at the time I was sporting a beard. This meant even with a thick layer of the Release Cream on bits of my beard were being pulled out as the mould was being removed.
Sadly I had to shave but hey I guess it's a small price to pay for making art!
It made for some interesting casts though, as each one that was casted in the mould in which I was sporting facial hair, pieces of hair were captured in the plaster and appeared in the cast.
These little bits of scattered hair make the faces that more creepy, but it's a nice feeling to know that apart of me is actually in the cast. Weird I know! It just makes the essence of the tree that more realistic and meaningful I guess. Making something that is meant to be a representative of person's physical features, their temporary vessel that acts as a tool for their being. A storage device of their life. And capturing those final personal details such as bits of hair adds to the concept I am trying to portray.
Below are a couple of pictures of various face casts that I have created over the past few days. In total 30 face casts have been made. Not all may need to be used, and if some are left over it is always good to have spares left over just in case anything happens to the others when transferring them onto the trunk of the tree.
One difference needed to be made for one of the casts that I wanted to create. The trunk of the tree is going to conceal a projector, which is going to need an area big enough for the lens to be able to project the video content. Rather than just having a gaping hole in the tree that made no sense, had no relevance and drew away from the visual aspect of the sculpture, I decided to do a cast of an open mouthed face.
Having a face with an open mouth will make it possible for the video content to be displayed whilst hiding the projector from the public. It will not draw away from the visual aesthetics of the tree, and will almost be acting as a metaphor for looking inside a person to see what they're about.
This was a difficult mould to make as my mouth needed to be open at all times, with as minimal movement as possible so that the mould could settle properly. I needed to keep my mouth extended as wide as possible also so that I was enabling enough room for a projector to be able to project out of it.
To do this I sliced an orange in half and held it within my mouth for sustainability. It was a real effort to hold that orange in my mouth for half an hour whilst I waited for the Body Silicone and the Mod Roc to both be applied and set properly.
I'm not going to lie, I nearly had a slight panic attack at one point because I almost chocked on my own saliva and the orange juice that had been building up within my mouth. Luckily when this incident happened it was time for the moulds to be taken off. A major case of lock jaw followed shortly afterwards but as I said before, it's a small price to pay.
I also had the safety of my friends there helping me in case anything went wrong, so precautions were taken.
Below are a few pictures of the Silicone casts sitting in the Mod Roc cases that were made during this process. I have uploaded these just to show the sort of detail that is captured with the use of the Body Double Silicone.
Through these visuals you can see by the amount of dried up plaster left over inside the casts just how much these casts have been reused. Even after multiple casts neither one has lost a glimpse of detail or shown signs of tearing/degrading.
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