The posts added today are from over the last couple of weeks. I couldn’t update blog as I have technical problems!
In developing the wax sculptures I seem to be getting some interesting sections, which I am developing further. Keeping wax in bucket of cold water is working well, just may need to buy more buckets. This cold water storage gave me another idea about warming the wax quickly to start with: – put it in hot water for a few seconds. This seems to work well with the modelling wax, though once the sculptures take on their more delicate aspects don’t think it’s such a good idea, to re-warm that way. Also having to take care as if droplets of water are on the wax and get worked into the surface it seems to become less stable.
Further developments hoping to get my hands on some dentists wax to test out its properties. (Thanks Steve).
As I am forming the sculptures they start to develop by themselves especially sections I am not working on directly. They are affected by how I hold them, which parts are touching my hands, how warm the room is, the rate at which I am working or the pressure I use, and how warm or cold my hands are. These factors all influence the movement within the wax. I like this as some interesting forms have developed and it helps me evolve an initial idea into something more. Whatever I have been looking at in my research seems to seep into the work too. Not just at an obvious conscious level, but very much at a sub-conscious level, sometimes elements appear and when I reflect on them I realise it has to do with something I have seen or read weeks earlier, and my brain has obviously digested the information and has evolved it into something new.
To progress the organic less controlled side of the work further (and to have a slightly stronger result, (while still maintaining fragility and unstable end results), I am going to take some firm setting wax, e.g. microcrystalline melt it and then via some container introduce it to cold water. Hopefully this will set it in some interesting forms, which I can then work on if needed with possibly a small blowlamp kind of thingy!! (Well I have not bought it yet so I don’t know what it’s called).
