Mold Making and Casting (after a very old,
traditional Chinese technique)
Mifune-sensei, alltogether 6 hours a week
It was a great course and very helpful to understand
more about mold-making. As I told in my first school related entry
before, I was making a bronze bowl. The whole process really turned
out pretty complicated but I was very happy with the end result. The
bowl itself is still not quite ready now, but very close, only need
to get the peak line of the spiral to a high polish.
When I had gotten it first out of the mold and cleaned
up a bit, I was told that one can use Urushi on metal (which opened a
whole new universe of possibilities) and definitely wanted to try
that out immediately. It's pretty simple. One needs to mix the urushi
one wants to use with a bit of graphite so it sticks better to the
metal, then it's applied very thinly and the piece put in an oven to
be heated slowly to 120degrees and slowly cool again – basically
the urushi is burned on. I wish I understood the chemical processes
better, since to me the setting of Urushi by putting it in a cupboard
with high humidity seems pretty contrary to setting it by heating it
up. Somehow it has to do with the Urushi binding watermolecules from
the air to set into a stable, hard surface. I'm not sure how heating
a metal piece fits into that... I wish I had paid more attention in
Chemics at highschool...
Anyways, here some pics. I have some images for a 'Making Of' as well, but can't promise to get that done any time soon...^^'
(as always, clicking on the picture will open it bigger)
The bowl directly after the cast with the casting channels still on.
The bowl roughly cleaned.
And its outside...
... and inside after being treated with urushi.
I plan to still polish just the very peak of the spiral, then it should be ready.
Urushi: Maki-e
Hayashi-sensei, alltogether 6 hours a week
We really did draw a lot of flowers. But then we also
spend a terrible amount of money on tools and gold and silver powder
(I was allowed to buy only silver powder, fortunately!). In fact I
think none of the students attending this course actually even
started making the finished plates in the time of the course since we
spent so much time with drawing, composing the final designs and
watching Hayashi-sensei demonstrate the different techniques. It was
extremely interesting though. To see him work as well as eventually
using the technique myself. In the end Hayashi-sensei gave us time to
finish the plates ourselves until the end of August.
We learned about two techniques, Hira-makie and
Togidashi-makie which seem to be the two main techniques used wich
can be combined with each other as well as more surface creating
techniques. We were supposed to make two plates with one technique
each. Unfortunately I didn't understand quite right and my Hira-makie
plate turned out to be wrong because I used the Togidashi technique
in it as well. Hayashi-sensei was really sorry because he thought
himself responible for not explaining well enough. I didn't take the
whole thing very tragically though. He gave me the possibility to
make the Hira-plate again in the next term and I will gladly do that
because now, through my mistakes, I understand much better how both
techniques work. The Togidashi-plate basically turned out alright,
but somehow, I have no idea how, I got a huge scratch in it and while
not yet realizing how deep it was I tried to just sand it off and
through that broke the layer of the uppermost urushi-surface, which
can unfortunately be seen very clearly on the polished plate. Oh
well... now I know much better what this is about so when I use these
techniques again I think the result will turn out better. It was a
nice course though, I liked it a lot.
And for some reason, though I was sure I made one, I can't find the picture of the finished Togidashi plate... :(
Sculpture: Bust
Gotou-sensei, 3 hours a week
A sculpting course in which we made a bust from clay
which we later cast in plaster. Model was Kan-chan, 4th
year student from the same room I work in. It was interesting and
very challenging. I was satisfied enough in the end, though I don't
think my bust looks very much like Kan-chan...
One problem was that I didn't know we were supposed to
make it life-sized, and when I was told to make it bigger, the
relations of the skull took a turn for the worse. Still, very nice to
have done this, since trying to get the face of a person right
requires a different, more exact way of modelling than doing a torso,
which we made in Lahti before.
The casting also was somewhat different than we did in
Finland. We first took a negative plaster cast of the head in 2 or if
required 3 parts, then opened it and took out the clay. Then the two
halves were prepared with soapy water and put together again and very
liquid plaster was poured in and spread around. That was done a few
times until the initial layer of plaster was thick enough, then the
whole thing was backed with something they called 'stuff'. I'm not
sure they actually meant that English word with it, but since they
were in fact 'stuffing' the cast with it it makes sense to me. The
'stuff' is some kind of very rough, somewhat stiff long fibre which
we cut into roughly 20cm long pieces and then rolled around between
our palms until it looked a little like a flat bird's nest. Then it
was soaked with plaster and applied to the inside of the cast thick
enough to give sufficient strength to the bust when the outer mold
would be removed but still being much lighter as if one had cast the
complete head solidly.
Just to show how surprisingly thin the plaster layer can be, supported be the 'stuff'.
In the end I think the clay version of the bust looked
better than the white plaster...
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