FMD #26a

The mini portrait bust is now complete and ready for mold-making should bronze castings need to be made. When casting in bronze, you first start by making a mold (negative) of the sculpture, which damages the clay, since it is so soft. The mold is then used to cast the hollow wax (positive). If there were voids behind the flowers on the hat, the rubber would create a ‘plug’ in that void - then when you cast the wax, the wax would also re-create the void behind the flowers….and when you go to put the wax out the mold the plug behind the flowers would pull the flowers off or out of shape. So I spent some time going through the piece looking for voids that would cause casting issues and plugging them up. The trick is to create a deep enough undercut to cast shadows while still making sure that the hole is sealed up. 

The ribbons on the hat are treated separately from the voids that could be lurking behind the flowers. In this case we want to keep the open spiral of the ribbons so the mold-maker may choose to cut the ribbons off and mold them separately, then we’ll cast them in wax and either attach before casting in bronze or cast them separately in bronze and weld them in place after.