Shannon Kish - Artist

This is my art diary. I love to dabble in different things, but mainly I love to draw, sculpt and make jewelry. This site documents my lessons learned as I delve into other areas of "play."
As you can see, I have a bit of an obsession with big-headed men. I like the large craniums. Stay a bit and look around!

If you're interested in purchasing any art or jewelry, please visit my web store at http://www.shannonkishartist.com/

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Latex Rubber Mold Making

So I'm trying to learn how to make molds of my big-headed men sculptures and it's REALLY time-consuming. Given the fact that my faces have lots of curves and more than a few undercuts, I decided to go the latex rubber in a mother mold route. I got a couple of books and read up on it, but some things are left unsaid. These are the situations where it would be cool to take a class or know somebody else that has done it so I could get some advice. I'm wondering, once I finish putting on the rubber (about an 1/8 of a inch thick, which is approximately 20 coats of rubber, the first ten being 100% rubber and the next ten a 2:1 ratio of rubber to paste maker)--but, I digress--so, as I said, I'm wondering if I've still got some undercuts after the rubber application, am I able to make my mother mold out of plaster at this point? Won't I become interlocked? I think I need to have no undercuts at all to be able to do this. Is there some sort of filler I can use to remove the undercuts? Woe is me...I need to do more research. I'm now into my third or fourth week on this stupid project. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it.

Soldering jump-rings revisited

So I believe I'm really getting a design down for soldering these pendants. Instead of placing the jump-rings on a perpindicular plane, I'm now soldering only one on a parallel plane. I then attach another jump-ring to the soldered jumpring and then I have a charm. I'm so pleased! I'll post a pic soon.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Newfound Wisdom

So I think I figured out the soldering of the jump-rings. Cut a piece of copper foil in half and attach the jump-ring to the piece with it. AND USE FLUX!!! I think that's what did me in last time. I forgot to add flux because I had already used it on the piece for the initial soldering. Instead of doing the jump-rings last, as I had in the past, I soldered them first. It made a huge difference. Now I can make memory glass pendants! YAY!