More Trailwalking

Since last post, Cathy, a regular training friend, and I, set out on a training walk from a lookout called "Eagle on the Hill" to on the southern slopes of the Mt Lofty Ranges to Ambers Gully on the northern side, a distance of 42 km which took us 8 hours 5 minutes to complete. Although it did not rain, the track was still rather wet with all the rain we have had over the last several weeks.The creeks were full and swollen and the waterfalls were lovely with water spilling over them.

It is actually quite wonderful to have all the heavy rain as our state has been in drought for about 10 years. and the state has had to build a desalination plant to ensure that we do not run out of water.
The walk took in three quarters of the Yurrebilla Trail which traverses Cleland Conservation Park, just below Mt Lofty (our tallest mountain at 711m) through to the very steep Horsnell Gully Conservation Park on to Norton Summit where we stopped for a coffee at lunch time. We then headed down the steep trail into Morialta Conservation park where I couldn't resist taking a couple of photos of the waterfalls and where we met a visitor to Australia from Switzerland.
We then carried on out of Morialta across to Black Hill Conservation Park where we climb straight up to the summit at 467m and cross back down to Ambers Gully.
We were happy with our effort but also glad to be finished for the day.

John and I went up to Kangaroo creek dam to see the spillway open for the first time in nine years and drove back through Cuddly Creek where we had a lovely lunch at Babette's cafe( one of the girls from our group of trailwalkers) .I was impressed to see her two certificates from walking (running)100km in 23hrs and 24hrs.
I hope I might be able to try a 100km event next year, if I keep the training up.

Monday I took myself for a mixture of walking and jogging up our local hill reserve. The wildflowers are out and are beautiful. I did roughly5km in an hour and today I went to Fitness Tone session and last night did my regular yoga weekly session.
I have also entered the City to Bay Fun Run, only hope the steep bush tracks have hardened me up for the 12 km event on Sunday.

I have been also working on a design commission for a life size bronze sculpture for the last three months. I fired the maquette in the kiln along with another piece which I want to paint with Casein paints. So the design piece should be finished by the end of the week and mailed off.

Trail walking

Thought I might blog about the trail walking we have been doing lately. We walked as a group of 4 on Monday up Anstey's Hill for a 2 hour walk.
The weather was reasonable after the very heavy rain since Friday and all over the weekend. We were going to do one of the more difficult walks over Black Hill on Saturday but the rain was quite heavy all day with very strong winds, not the sort of weather to go bush in, so we cancelled the walk.
Monday , we saw a huge male kangaroo on the track, quite the biggest I've seen walking.
We have also spotted koalas high in the gums and also seen 2 wild hives with lots of honeycomb.
Tomorrow, I am walking with Karen and Thursday there will be 3 of us so we should clock up a few kilometres this week.
I tried to enter Sea to Summitt , a 30 km trail being held on Sunday but the entries closed before I was able to enter, but I have entered for the City to Bay Funrun being held in 2 week's time, I just hope the trail walking and running will see me fit enough to do it.

A short post .

This is a bronze cast of the torso I was working on earlier this year. The stand was also made commercially especially for the piece. Silvio Opponyi helped me with the patina, it looks so good.

This is a stoneware bust "Dreaming", I have used casein paint to colour the bust.
"Shaun", a stoneware bust coloured with a bronze patina.


I am touching base with the blog as it is ages since I posted news.
Our group exhibition went well and has now finished at Artistic License on Melbourne Street, Adelaide but my 4 pieces can still be seen there for another couple of weeks as they did not have any sculptures on display so mine have remained till the start of the following exhibition.
I was a little suprised at the opening, that the artists weren't introduced to the good crowd of people that attended.
I hoped that people seeing my work might consider having a bust made or having a bronze head commissioned.
I am currently working on a commission for a sculpture design, and if all goes well, am hoping it will lead to another life size bronze in the near future.

I have been doing a lot of trail walking and jogging over the last few months so I am relatively leaner and fitter than I have been.
I walk with a group of women who are very fit and we walk the local hill trails usually for 2 to 8 hours and we last walked part of the yurrabilla trail from Norton Summit to Black Hill on Saturday, 22kms in 3 hours 33 minutes, whilst the rest of the girls were attempting the Oxfam Sydney 100 kms trail. Karen pulled out after going 60 km at 1 am and Babette also pulled out with injury, but Tracy and Sue finished the 100km in 27 hours which was wonderful news.
We are training to finish the Yurrabilla Trail, 56km across the face of the Adelaide hills in 11 hours. Only 4 weeks to go, as it is being held on Sunday October 3 2010.

Touching base

Gosh I haven't written anything for a while. The girls were using my computer during the school holidays and I tried to get to my blog but it kept blocking me saying that my password wasn't correct so I kept trying but didn't waste too much time to reset it. So finally I have reset it and will hopefully sit down soon and update the past 2 months.Bye for now.

Cast taken from 2 piece mould

This is the second cast taken , the first from the silicone rubber mould before anything has been done to it. The edges will need to be surformed to remove the excess plaster and the line where the two halfs of the mould meet or the seam line will need to be removed with great care.

There is a cavity in the plaster by the hip which will need filling and also the extra plaster by the waist, neck and arms will need to be removed.
The screw holes in the centre wall can be seen.
The plaster will now dry out for two weeks before the process of patinating can begin.

Body casting

These are the finished images of the cast, bronze patina and waxed with a brown wax to highlight and protect the cast.



My beautiful model is propped in position for the duration of the plaster casting session, the pose needs to be taken into consideration, as to whether the model can maintain this position for about 30 minutes approximately.
The model is covered with a layer of petrolium jelly and her pose needs to have some support for her to be comfortable. Her arms are supported and her hip leans against the table.
On this day the model is working in extreme heat of 39 degrees c which added to the difficulty of the pose being held.
The cast has been removed and inspected for faults on the plaster. Although there are some bubbles, the cast has been successful.
The mould is repaired with fresh plaster where there are small blemishes such as bubbles and minor problems on the surface.
The mould is brushed with more petrolium jelly to make sure the new layer of plaster does not stick to the existing plaster whilst making a cast of the body mould.
Plaster is prepared in batches and brushed into the mould and built up to an even thickness all over the cast of 20 cm or 3/4 inch. The back of the mould is smoothed out and this time can be used to include arrangements for hanging the piece or incorporating a rod for a stand.

Once the plaster has set, leave several hours before taking the original mould off the second plaster being careful to not to mark or dig your tools into the new cast

Again blemishes in the new plaster can be filled by wetting the plaster down and filling with a small batch of new plaster in the holes as seen on the inner breast area.

Areas can also be strengthened where they are thin as on the lower edge of the torso and around the armholes and inner neck.
The back of the form can also be shaved back with a surform or knife if the plaster is too thick.

Work still needs to be done on the edge of the arms and at the back of the neck, but it is New Year's eve and I was sure the client would like a glimpse of the work.


I am happy with the work and so is the client.
The plaster now needs to dry out completely for about two weeks before applying the patina or colouring of the plaster.

The patching of holes can be seen under the breast where a cavity was repaired.

I decided to paint the surface with a layer of white acrilic paint to have a clean surface to work on although this is not necessary.
I then used the instructions from an old book I had used many year's ago, Modelled Sculpture & Plaster Casting by Arnald Auerbach in chapter 13 on finishing and colouring plaster casts.
A thin layer of shellac is painted over the cast and allowed to dry.
The next step is to add some Burnt umber powder into a small amount of the thinned shellac or White Polish in a saucer and give the cast a coating of this.

Then add some bronze powder and drag it into the coating on the prominences of the cast.
It can look too aggressive and I found it took a few attempts to make it look like a bronze cast

I wasn't completely satisfied with the result but went on and melted some beeswax with a little Turps overnight and added burnt umber to the liquid wax and painted on the coloured wax.


and also applied the same sequence to the back of the cast

I kept having small troublesome areas that would not colour correctly and always looked like patched colour and the trouble with shellac is the fact if you work the area a little too long the coloured ares becomes sticky and lifts off easily which kept happening.

Eventually we decided that I could use the work also so that meant that I needed to make a mould to recast another piece for myself and that also gave us the possibility to have a bronze piece cast as well.

This meant that I would need to make a two piece mould and that I could retackle the colour of the first cast again after making the new 2 piece mould.

The troubled colour is evident on the side of the torso as it lays on a blanket of clay.
A wall of clay is placed around the torso and built across the chest and stomach to divide the piece for easy separation.

A layer of silicone rubber was first placed over half the torso and allowed to set over night
A second thin layer layer was placed over the first layer and squares of felt covered this whilst it was still sticky and allowed to go off.

Two layers of resin with fiberglass cloth imbedded between the layers was then added to the felt making a three layer flexible mould.

The sides of the mould were trimmed, the clay fence down the middle was removed and cleaned and a coating was applied to the areas where the second side would butt against the first side so that it would not stick together.

The same proceedure was repeated on the second side of the torso.


Edges trimmed and seam line brushed with petrolium jelly to stop the rubber adhering to the parting seam.



Silicone rubber layers first.

Then the resin layers.
After the resin has cured, the seams are trimmed and holes are drilled in the parting seams to screw the pieces together, so they can be unscrewed to take each side off separately.
This is done before the moulds are taken apart.


The screws can now be removed.
The first side is removed and it has partly peeled off the layer of colour with the rubber.

Second half removed and the parting line can be seen.

Making a body cast

I wanted to show bloggers the steps to take you through the making of a body cast.
I haven't written anything for a month and have been meaning to post this all month but just haven't gotten round to reducing the images till now.
I'll post the images and fill in the information.
I'm having trouble uploading images so will have to solve some problems with them first.