I Made A New Zine For The Upcoming Mesa County Comic Con. Please Come By And See It On October 6th.

I made a new zine for the upcoming Mesa County Comic Con. Please come by and see it on October 6th.

I LOVE messing around with plastic and making figurines and I've spent probably too much time fucking around and finding out, so don't mind me.

For pinholes in the casting, I try to avoid damaging the surface too much further as it can expose a LOT of holes underneath; my default tends to be a combination of a filling putty, then layers of finer and finer primers. Tamiya Putty works pretty well for the latter, like auto-body filler for the gunpla crowd. It dries pretty quickly on the surface but takes longer to fully cure in thick sections. I apply that to pinholes with a dental pick or a needle, and really make sure it covers the whole surface before smoothing over it with a wooden or stiff rubber tool. As a filling putty, it's self-leveling, and I really like that. There's other fillers though, and some people I know have had tremendous luck with liquid styrene likewise scraped into the holes. I just know that stuff gives me a headache, so I don't use it.

For fixing and repair work, I prefer filling primers that I can apply by hand with a brush. Mr Surfacer is the thing I like to use for that. It comes in 500, 1000, and 1200 grades, with 1200 being the finest finish. I use lacquer thinner to smooth out the edges so as to save myself the sanding elbow grease. Both the fillers and the primers need time to cure and will need sanding between layers; if you've ever done auto-body work, it's very familiar, and it looks like you've already started that process.

I find with sculptures that the foam sanding pads are great up until you need to finish tight detailed areas, but that's what gluing sandpaper to a toothpick is for.

For the void under the chin where the resin didn't cast, my favorite product is Epoxie Sculpt, although other two-part epoxy putties work too. I just like epoxie sculpt because it bonds super well to cast urethane and cures really hard, and it has a very nice texture for sculpting. It can also be smoothed with straight water rather than solvents. I honestly sculpt in epoxie directly quite a bit; it's my go-to, especially if something needs strength. It has a decently long cure profile, although that could mean you run the risk of the fixed parts slumping if you have something that can't support itself while it's curing. The same company also makes Fixit Sculpt, which tends to hold itself up a lot more easily.

Whatever material you’re using to fill the voids, though, I cannot sing the praises of having some dental picks and wax carving spatulas enough. Sometimes you just need to poke and scrape and wiggle things in areas a hand was never meant to enter.

One thing to look out for with future castings is that urethane is extremely sensitive to moisture and will foam under even slightly humid conditions. Some companies' resins are more sensitive to it than others, and I spent an unfortunate amount of money on wasted resin to figure that out. Since then I store my unused resin over molecular sieves like a goddamn meth lab.

Another way to help with pinholes and voids in the future is to slush-cast the mold first by only partially filling the mold and manually rotating it around so that the resin coats all surfaces with an clean coat. The bubbles don't tend to stick around very well when you do that as you're not allowing them to collect on the surface and you're more able to get to difficult-to-cast areas. You already nailed it on the head with more vents in the design, but a lot of times, I find that there’s also a learning curve in figuring out what you have to do to get a specific result out of a specific mold, whether that’s moving it around and shaking out bubbles manually, squeezing certain sections in order to move bubbles along, or slush-casting a first coat and backfilling it.

Honestly, it’s been really exciting to see you sculpt, and it’s made me want to sculpt again. I’m looking forward to updates on your monsterclay adventures.

Hey, with your figurine, would you like some product recommendations and tips on fixing it back up again or do you feel like you know where you're gonna go next with it?

I would l o v e any hints or tips on how to move forward. I think I’m doing ok on fixing it up - but still, hit me.

In the 10,000 years since I last posted on tumblr, I stopped teaching basic art 101 and beginning 3d design, started teaching animation, taught workshops for teenagers, did an artist residency, taught workshops for old people, had a couple crises, had a couple shows (unrelated to crises), developed clinical burnout and a serious resurgence of serious depression, survived the pandemic, had a bunch of friends and family NOT survive the pandemic, developed some shiny new health problems that aren't so much new as much as "I actually know about them now," ran into some really shitty educational biases and politics at my job, had another crisis, got threatened with firing, stopped teaching drawing, lost my art studio, got a new job (I'm working at a frame shop now instead of a university), and started playing Dungeons and Dragons on a regular basis.

Been a while. Sup.

So my goal this year is a rather modest one: finish at least one unfinished work of art per month. So far I'm on track. The is the Mother of Jackdaws

Some demo pieces from my principles of animation class

Started a diptych