Red Wax and Freezing Moulds

Today I continued to experiment with wax, slowly making bigger sculptures as the day progressed. Unfortunately as I only had about eight candles I had to keep melting down the work that I made, leaving only the photographs that I had taken as evidence. This is a problem that I hope to combat by buying some more wax in bulk form.

Throughout the day I learned lots of key information about the pouring process. One of these was to not put the work in the freezer, at least not until the wax has turned back into a solid. If you put the wax in too soon it will leave holes in the mould, which reduces the strength of the work. On the other hand though, if you place the mould in the freezer before you have poured the wax, it strengthens it, reducing the likelihood of the mould breaking and wax going everywhere. 

After researching a little online, I discovered a material called Machinable Wax, which is basically wax with a higher melting point. After looking around though, it seems that in the UK it's hard to buy and expensive, so I found a way to make it myself. This entails ripping up plastic bags and adding it to the wax mixture when you're melting it down on the stove. I tried out this technique on my last sculpture of the day, I'm not sure if it worked or not, but I presume I'll find out when it gets hot in my house. I also started to use colour within the wax, adding half a crayon to make the work more vibrant. I need to think more about what each colour will signify.

As well as this I started to make the work larger, with the final sculpture being about 11cm tall. I intend to make bigger ones when I get more wax.

I also thought a lot about how I'm going to eventually put the work up on the wall. I tried just poking a hole into the back of one sculpture with a pencil, but this just ended up breaking the piece. So I'm thinking that drilling into the backs of the sculptures and simply slotting the work into a screw on the wall is the best idea, but I may have to come up with something more sophisticated, because the pieces get heavier as they get further away from the wall. This is something that I need to properly look into. 

I played another mobile game today called Alto's Adventure. It's an endless runner, were you are a skier going down a mountain. Although it sounds the same as a lot of other games, the peaceful music and constantly changing time of day makes it a unique experience that was nice to play.

I continue to make daily Snapchat videos, but as these aren't associated with my main project I'm just going to post one Snapchat at the end of each blog, signalling that I am still saving them in my computer.

In the next few days I hope to continue to experiment with wax, as well as working more with plaster, trying out which material works best. This is an image of how I attempted to simulate the dip in the plaster, unsuccessfully.