My Very Own Web Site!

I took some time off for a little while to finally get my very own web site up and running. I'm a programmer by trade (artist for life), so I've been able to do it all on my own, from database creation to web site development in .NET. I'm really excited about it. And you wouldn't think it about me, but I went with pink. Hmmmm....pink. Not really my style, but it seemed to fit somehow. So check it out and buy something! Feel free to let me know what you think. I'm always looking to improve. And since I got laid off recently, if anyone is interested in having me develop a web site, let me know! I'm just throwing that out there. ;-)

http://www.shannonkishartist.com

A Sale...YAY!

I finally sold this pair of earrings on Etsy!

I made them so long ago. They had like nine different people favorite them, but nobody wanted to buy them at $18.00. Then I raised the price to $23.00 and someone bought them. Interesting. Do people think if they pay more for something that it must be better? It seems silly, but I know of a couple different scenarios where this has proven to be true. For example, I have this friend who is a photographer, http://www.justinkphotography.com. When he first started his business, he didn't charge quite as much as other photographers and business was slower, but as soon as he raised his rates, he started getting more jobs. It could just be coincidental that business started picking up around the same time he raised his rates, but there seems to be some correlation. I suppose it depends on your target audience.

My First Moldmaking/Casting Experience

So I decided to make latex rubber molds of some of my big-headed sculpture wallhangings (as discussed in a previous post). My experience was arduous, time-consuming and only produced so-so results. I had three sculptures to work with. Unfortunately, I'm an idiot and I did all three at the same time, instead of doing one whole process for an individual sculpture, so I could learn from my mistakes. Note to self: "Don't be impatient."

I also didn't take photographs of the process, which I'm a little sorry about, but what are you gonna do? Note to self: "Start taking pics of process."

But, alas, I have photos of my finished products, both the molds as well as the first castings.




















These are a couple of the latex rubber portions of the molds
after they were pulled off of the original piece. There's some strange fungus or mold growing in the rubber, which really sucks. I think it's because I left the rubber mold in the mother mold before the plaster used for the mother was completely dry. Lesson learned.

Here are a couple of the mother molds.
















And here are the rubber molds sitting in the mother molds.




















Here are the castings sitting next to their originals. Some of the pieces broke off when I first peeled off the rubber. I've already glued them back onto the original pieces in these pics. There were some impossible undercuts where rubber got totally underneath and connected back to the top. Another lesson learned. Make sure you fill in undercuts as much as possible without losing detail. Because I didn't do this, my castings didn't turn out so well in those areas. The most noticeable was in the piece with the curlies on the face. There were some areas where the plaster didn't get all the way into the rubber mold because of the curly details or improper pouring.





















All in all, they didn't turn out too badly. I've since returned to the rubber molds where the undercuts connected and cut them with scissors, so, hopefully, it won't happen on the next casting. I'm going to try painting them before I try more castings, just to see how much they absorb the paint, et cetera, to make sure I know the proper technique for next time. All in all, the exercise was informative and definitely a learning experience. The amount of detail you get with the latex rubber is really quite amazing. I'll report more as I keep learning.

Until then...I'm gonna go have a shmoke and a pancake.